


Pox

by Beefgoddess



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Crime Fighting, F/M, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 15:00:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 48,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beefgoddess/pseuds/Beefgoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elliot gets the chicken pox from a perp and Olivia takes care of him. Swearing, violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Pox

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"Is something going on with you that I should know about?" Olivia asks, blowing at the steam billowing above her cup of hot tea. Her partner is rubbing at his temples, with a frustrated expression on his face. She can see that he is stressed about something; his face is drained of color and his eyes have dark circles underneath them. "You look like hammered shit."

Normally Elliot will answer her sarcastic remark with a quip of his own, but instead he puts his free hand at his shirt collar, tugging at his tie restlessly. "I'm fine."

She forces back a smirk. Fine, huh? "Why don't you just take that off?" It looks uncomfortable anyway. Olivia's noticed in the past few weeks that the once nicely pressed dress shirts have resigned to a fate of rumpled dishevelment, and she believes this aligns with the amicable separation of the always tumultuous Stabler union. He'd admitted only about ten days ago of his marriage's fate, and she'd tried to be offended that he'd kept it from her, but silently she was relieved. It explained his most recent sullen and sometimes volatile attitude. Olivia had spent a while wondering if he just needed a lobotomy to help his mood.

He presses his knee into the steering wheel as he wrestles the tie off, flinging the piece of fabric behind him into the backseat. "I'm having a bit of a rough start," he finally admits, his voice raspy. He picks up his coffee from the cup holder and sips at it, wincing as he swallows.

Olivia studies his actions, concern beginning to trickle into her middle. "Are you feeling all right? You're as pale as a ghost, El." She wants to reach out and touch his shoulder, but the passive coworker in her keeps her from slipping. It isn't proper for her to be so personal, even though the woman and friend inside of her itches to.

He sighs, jaw clenched. "My throat's been a little sore. Over the weekend I've felt achy, but Lizzie had the flu last week, so I'm probably coming down with it. It's all right, though. I had a couple DayQuil before leaving."

She nods, wondering if she should order him to cough up the driver's seat and whisk him home where he belongs. Yeah, good luck with that, Benson, she thinks derisively. "You've got a mountain of sick leave, El. You can always take a day off, you know."

He shoots her a disdainful look. "Like that would do me any good."

"Elliot, if you've got a bug, you run the risk of infecting everyone at work."

"Did you know that people are most contagious when they have no symptoms, Liv? If I were going to infect other people at the station, it's already happened by now."

Olivia chuckles, putting her hands up in mock surrender. "Just trying to help."

Elliot worries his bottom lip as his eyes scan the road, appearing apologetic. He turns his head and regards her with a small grin. "Eh, if I start feeling that bad, I just might take you up on that." He raises his cup again, but glances at the brown liquid and thinks again.

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A few hours later at headquarters, Olivia is discussing their current case with Fin and Munch, as Elliot slouches in his worn desk chair, his hands crisscrossed over his face. After arriving at the precinct and working diligently on paperwork for the last two and a half hours, she has watched his movements degenerate from attentiveness to fidgety discomfort, and now nearly comatose.

He's been leaning back in his chair like that for a good ten minutes, so she knows he is miserable at present. Whatever Elizabeth managed to give him over the weekend is now running full course throughout his body. "Wilson left fingerprints all over the windowsill after the incident, so there is absolutely no way he is getting out of that one. We got 'im." Her gaze averts as Elliot shifts his position only to fold his arms across his chest. He looks chilled. "Elliot, you up for it?"

After a few seconds of dead air, Fin smirks. "Earth to Elliot. Come in, Elliot." He taps the man's elbow lightly.

He startles as if awoken from a nap, and peers at Fin with his trademark scowl, the one that has made him famous among perps. "Yeah."

Olivia shares a look with the two other detectives, but they only appear amusingly confused. She listens to her partner push forward, stand with painful slowness, sigh, and walk up beside her. "El, you look like you're about ready to fall over."

"I'll be fine." She half-smiles at his predictable answer.

"Sure. I have an idea," she says, placing a hand softly on his right arm. "Why don't you crash in the crib for a few hours? You won't be much help to the investigation if you're sick."

Munch allows an uneasy look to fall over his face. "You breathing germs into my face and forcing my body into being susceptible to a virus? Please heed your partner's warning." Elliot frowns severely, until it appears his eyebrows are cutting a slice down the middle of his forehead. "What?" The slighter man shrugs haplessly.

"You're going to need my back up, Liv," he states gloomily.

She bites back a grimace. He's been up for the job other countless times while sick with whatever is being passed around his house, whether a cold, a stomach virus, or the flu. She's not sure why this time feels much different. "Wilson is not known to be violent, and has no criminal record. It'll be fine to crash for a couple hours. I promise, I will drag you out of the crib if anything happens."

He nods once and Olivia escorts her partner towards the crib. She can't help but feel concern tangle her insides, especially when he hardly fights with her to lie down on one of the cots. "I'll be back in a couple hours," she whispers as he settles in, wrapping himself with the scratchy, dark blue department-issued blanket.

"Yep." He listens to the door creak closed and shuts his eyes, feeling defeated and secretly relieved for the momentary respite.

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When Olivia, Fin and Munch return a few hours later from an unfruitful sweeping of the streets in their search for Dirk Wilson, she expects him to be awake and lurking around the precinct, angry and determined to give her the wrath once he lays eyes on her. Surprisingly, the floor is relatively quiet, save for the usual scattering of discussion, rustling of papers, and occasional ringing of desk phones. She immediately makes a bee-line to the crib to check on Elliot, but when she pushes the door open, she spies his motionless form in the same cot she left him. She feels slightly nervous as she creeps over to him, and then touches his shoulder gently. His body is emanating warmth unusual for a January evening in Manhattan.

"Elliot," she says in a voice barely above a whisper. Her only response is a small grumble and she watches as he sleepily turns from his side to lie on his stomach. "El," she says, louder this time.

"Hmm?" he groans into the thin pillow, and then turns his head to the other cheek, facing her. She watches his eyelids part to slits.

"I'm back."

He squeezes his eyes shut as he yawns, then pushes up from cot, shoves the blanket off of his body, and sits up slowly. He takes a moment to rub his eyes wearily, appearing so much like a sleepy child that she can't help but let a tiny grin break out on her face.

Olivia waits for a few seconds and schools her face back into professional impassivity, and then continues. "We weren't able to locate Wilson."

He draws his palm over his chin and scratches, pausing to stare at the floor. She wonders if he's heard anything she has said. She chooses to keep talking, assuming he just needs some time to wake up, especially if he's not feeling very well.

"We've got unis patrolling the streets around the school. Fin and Munch are looking over security footage again to see if they can find any indication of his whereabouts."

He nods. "Okay."

She narrows her eyes, staring at him critically all of a sudden, realizing that he is not snapping out of this funk that he's in. "El, are sure you all right? You look pretty flushed." She pushes aside any reservations and palms his forehead, then pulls it away as if it has been burned. "Elliot, you've got a fever!" she gasps.

"A fever isn't going to kill me, Liv," he murmurs and yawns again.

Olivia glares at his insolence. "Come on," she says finally. "I'm driving you home."

He shares her furious glare. "I don't need to go home right now."

The look she lets slip onto her face says it all. And Elliot is definitely not in the mood to argue with her, not when he feels like his head is about ready to split open, his joints ache like he's aged fifty years in a few hours, and his stomach is rolling in a way that he fears has the potential to become ugly. She nods wordlessly at his silent acceptance, and then moves toward the door, hoisting it open. "Get moving, Stabler."

Elliot sighs dejectedly and stands with his arms and legs moving like tree stumps. As if perfectly cued, Cragen breezes by when the two detectives descend the staircase. The captain stops before them, his hands on his hips. "Oh, good, you're awake. Elliot, Olivia, I want you two to check out the lead we just got at Hudson University. Dirk Wilson has a particular obsession with librarians, and one of them called with his description."

Olivia looks at her partner, knowing he is going to refuse the sick day now that he knows he is needed. "Actually, Captain, I was on my way to taking Elliot home."

Cragen narrows his eyes, sweeping his critical gaze over Elliot, fixating on the obvious exhaustion and flush of his face. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Elliot says, feeling ridiculous. "Lizzie had the flu recently, but I don't remember it being very nasty. If you need me, Cap, I can stay."

Olivia allows her mouth to hang open in shock. "Your forehead is burning up, El. You need to rest."

Cragen nods. "I agree with Olivia. Go home and sleep some of that flu off. Call tomorrow and let me know how you're feeling."

Elliot holds up his hand and shakes his head. "No, no, it's fine. I should be there. I owe it to the victims to get this jag off." Olivia scoffs next to him.

Cragen shrugs at her in understanding. "Do me a favor, Elliot. Go home afterward, will you?"

"I will," the detective assures him, and then forces his body into a stroll as he grabs his jacket and a wool cap. She can only stare at him as she follows suit.

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It's only a little after eight o'clock and Elliot is sleeping fitfully in his bed when a loud knocking noise sounds at his door. He contemplates simply ignoring whoever is there, but the responsible cop and father in him knows that if he ignores whoever this person is, he may be ignoring something important. His body protests as he climbs slowly out of bed, noticing that his joints are still quite achy. His head throbs at the base of his skull, and he places his hand on his neck as a way to push the intensity of it away. Much to his chagrin, he manages to stub his toe on his coffee table in the front room and he curses lividly. He limps to the front door where the knocking persists annoyingly. "What? Yeah!" he calls, undoing the locks. He swings it open to reveal his partner. Her expression is a mixture of hesitancy and irritation, and he notes that she is wearing a sweat suit in place of her immaculate work outfit.

They stand silently for what seems ages until she finally says, "Are you going to let me in?"

He steps aside, permitting her entrance into the apartment he'd secured just a couple weeks ago, feeling slightly embarrassed. Compared to his house, the one-bedroom flat is scantily-furnished and bare and there are boxes lining the walls, containing items that have yet to find a place. It must be strange for her to be so familiar with him living in a house full of family and warmth to a blank, depressing apartment with no color or life in it whatsoever. Elliot has tried to spend as much time away from the place as possible, since it often puts him in a sour mood staring at the white walls. The apartment is simply a place for him to pass out after work when he cannot find any other reason to linger around the precinct or dwell in a bar stool. His refrigerator doesn't even really have much in it—lots of leftovers from takeout and ready-made frozen dinners in his freezer, but he figures this hardly matters.

Olivia saunters in, the dark room seeping into her bones. "Don't you have any heat in this place?" The early winter cold resides in the air and frosts her cheeks.

His eyes are bloodshot. "Yeah, guess I forgot to turn it on." He sits down untidily into the recliner he insisted on removing from the house, the only item he is attached to that Kathy is willing to be rid of. She'd always threatened to throw it out, especially when the fabric had begun to tear away from the cushion underneath. Olivia takes a seat at the couch, setting her purse and keys down onto the table before her. She notices that envelopes and magazines are scattered all over the surface of it.

"Love the new place," she quips, leaning into the couch pillow and turning her knees in his direction. He quietly snickers, then rubs at his eyes, looking far more exhausted than she expects.

"Something going on?" he asks, crossing his arms and tensing in the frigid chilliness of the room. He was so comfortable in his bed, and despite the fact that his partner has made the effort to visit him, he is incapable of stifling the irritability in his demeanor.

She smiles uncertainly, spreading her hands out onto her thighs. "Well, I came to see how you were doing. You didn't look too great at the end of the day." She watches him carefully, noting that even in the darkness she can still see the paleness of his face. However, a red flush has spread on his cheekbones. "Have you taken anything for the fever?"

Elliot shrugs. "I took a couple Ibuprofen when I got home."

"Are they working?" she asks, as if very put upon. Is she going to have to drag the questions out of him?

"Eh," he mumbles, closing his eyes. "I probably should have taken another one."

Olivia surprises them both by reaching out with her hand and palming his forehead. His eyes shoot open, staring at her, marveling at the close proximity of their bodies. Her breaths come in short bursts, and he notes that she smells like peppermint gum.

She is distracted by the warmth, so he feels slightly more at ease, even though his flesh rises at her touch. "You still feel a little warm," she answers, her tone conveying a maternal concern. Their gaze meets and she pulls away, sensing the dangerous territory they are creeping into, made more so by his separation from Kathy. She reminds herself that this is her partner, her co-worker. It's the same Elliot she's worked with for years. She's shared a platonic friendship with him for a decade now that has teetered into the gray area a few times, but for the most part they have stayed well within the boundaries of partnerly amity.

Elliot clears his throat as if doing so will clear the tension between them. "I'll just grab another Ibuprofen." He stands gingerly, rubbing his arms, and then turns his thermostat to a more comfortable temperature. Olivia sits back into his couch and grabs the TV remote, tuning into the evening news. A reporter graces the screen, her body stiff as she stands behind the courthouse that she is painfully familiar with. She sighs and watches the segment with the volume low until commercials comes on, and she wonders if Elliot has gotten lost in his medicine cabinet. What is taking him so long? The news anchors are back on screen when she gets up, determined to see what exactly is taking the man so long. Can it really be that it takes him fifteen minutes to down a pill? Or is it something else?

She finds him in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed with his gaze aimed at the ground. "Elliot?" He doesn't answer her; instead, he hides his face in his hands. "What's wrong?" she asks gently, wracked with concern.

He pulls his hands away, his frown even more cutting than usual. "Turn on the light." Olivia flicks the switch and he winces visibly. "Does this look like a rash to you?" he queries, motioning at his cheek. She peers closer, touching his chin to examine both sides of his face.

She nods, mystified. "Yeah, it does. God, Elliot, they're all over. Are they anywhere else?" He lifts his shirt, revealing his bare torso, and the two of them notice small red bumps have appeared on his abdomen. After turning around Olivia confirms that they are on his back as well, spreading down his spine. "Could it be a heat rash?" she asks.

He looks just as stupefied. "I don't know. Maybe." He feels his skin crawl on his face and he instinctively reaches up to scratch the surface, but catches himself with a sickening realization. "Chicken pox?"

Olivia chuckles a little. "No, it couldn't be. Isn't it a childhood illness?"

He raises his eyebrows. "I never had it, and adults can get it." His memory kicks in suddenly and he thinks back a couple weeks, when they had brought in a suspect of a rape who'd been covered head to toe with bright red bumps. They'd had to bring him into the hospital even though the entire crew had really wanted for him to suffer miserably in a jail cell with the things. "No way."

"What?"

"That miserable son of a bitch," he groans.

Olivia feels like throttling him. "Who are you talking about?"

"Remember that case we wrapped up about ten days ago? Well, Lohman had that rash all over him. We sent him off to the hospital and the doctors thought it may be chicken pox. I will shit if I have it." Elliot chuckles humorlessly. "All it took was wrestling the idiot to the ground." She casts him a sympathetic smile. "You've had it before, right? The only one of my kids who actually got it was Maureen, but she was a year old and I managed to avoid them. Kathy made me stay at a hotel for a week until the scabs started to go away. The other ones got the vaccination so it wasn't a concern after that."

She looks clueless. "Elliot, I was a kid when I had them. I don't remember much, except not to scratch." Just as she says as much, he is absently raking his fingernails over a red bump. She grabs his hand and pushes it away. "You need to call your doctor and make an appointment. He can tell you what to do about treating the symptoms." He grumbles under his breath as she beams at him; the picture of health. "Why don't you take some antihistamines or NyQuil? Maybe sleeping it off would be best."

"Yeah," he answers as she meanders into his bathroom, immediately taking in the unkempt condition of the small space. A pill bottle is sitting on the counter, towel thrown over the shower door, aftershave and razor laid out on the sides of his sink. She supposes there is no need to be tidy if it's just him. She searches his medicine cabinet, unable to find any type of sedative save for a packet of Benadryl. That will do, she reasons. Olivia comes back into his bedroom armed with a cold washcloth, a small cup of water and a pink and white pill. Elliot has decided to lie back down and is buried underneath his comforter. "Take this. You'll be in dreamland in a half an hour."

He pushes away the blanket long enough to toss back the medicine. He takes the cloth from her and presses it to the sides of his face and neck. "Thanks, Liv," he mumbles quietly.

"No problem."

"You leaving?" he asks as he sets the cloth onto the bedside table next to him.

She shrugs. "I think I'm going to crash on your couch. Is that okay?"

He nods, turning onto his stomach like he had in the crib. She backs away, watching him for a couple minutes before closing the door.

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Olivia has been watching the last remnants of the news and a bit of David Letterman when she drifts off to sleep. She hadn't really meant to, as she didn't expect to be able to fall to sleep so easily on Elliot's couch. She wakes up to the dark room, lit up by the flashing of the TV screen. For a moment, she just watches the scene before her blearily, until she remembers where she is and why she is there. Olivia sits up hurriedly, her muscles shaky and her brain still in a fuzz. The clock on Elliot's wall reads that the time is 4:45 in the morning, so she stretches and adjusts her clothing. A handful of hours of sleep will be enough for her to manage on, as long as she can pass out later on.

Her stomach growls audibly, so she steps into his tiny kitchen and opens the refrigerator. There are few contents in there, none that she finds the least bit appealing. She sighs and closes the door, deciding that she'll go and get breakfast and coffee right after she checks up on her partner. And after doing that much, she will call Elliot in sick. Olivia makes her way down the short hallway and pushes her way into his bedroom. Sometime in his sleep he had taken his shirt off; he is still lying on his stomach, with the blanket shoved down around his waist. The muscular part of his back is visible, his arms crammed into his pillow. She can see in the dim light the red spots covering his skin. They've darkened in color and grown larger, now beginning to appear on his shoulders and travel downward onto his biceps. She wants to check his forehead, just in case he is feverish again, but she also doesn't want to disturb him while he rests. God knows he needs it.

Olivia goes against her better judgment and carefully touches his neck. He is very warm and this alarms her greatly. He stirs slightly, but remains asleep. His face is fairly warm, but she is hesitant to wake him up, because she knows he'll need all the rest he can get. After gazing at the prone, slumbering partner of hers for a few more seconds, she pushes herself back up into a standing position, stretching her exhausted muscles. She craves the comforting embrace of a nice hot chamomile tea, but knows that Elliot hates tea and definitely will not have it in his cupboards. Considering the fact that he probably indeed has chicken pox and needs medical supplies, she determines she'll head on over to a twenty-four hour pharmacy and pick up a few necessities, not to mention her tea, just so she can weather the rest of the morning in Elliot's frigid apartment with as much normalcy as possible.

With one longer look at the snoozing, polka-dotted lump on the bed, she swivels and treads back through the hallway, snatching up her keys and purse, then closes his door as quietly as possible.

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The drive is quicker than she thinks. Walgreens is naught but five minutes away, so she expertly parallel-parks against the sidewalk and hops out, pushing her way through the glass doors of the store. A bored cashier has been folding a heap of cheap t-shirts when she waltzes in and seeing that a customer has entered the empty place, the pile of clothing is put on hold for later.

Olivia glances up at the aisle markers and grabs a bottle of calamine lotion, as well as oatmeal bath, some NyQuil and then heads over to the food to grab a box of tea and a package of frosted donuts. She makes her way to the front of the store where the cashier waits behind her register.

"Pretty late night, would you say?" asks the woman who scans the products, glancing at them curiously.

Olivia sighs, pasting on a smile. "Unfortunately."

"Looks like somebody has the chicken pox," the cashier, whose nametag reads Ella, chuckles.

"Yeah," she snorts. "Just broke out in the rash last night."

Ella continues to run the rest of the items past the scanner. "How old?"

The detective frowns in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

"Your little one? How old?"

"Oh," Olivia laughs, this time it is a genuine one. "No, it's...my friend. He had a fever earlier in the day and then broke out in a bunch of spots last night. Chicken pox is the only thing we can think of to cause it."

"Lordy. A full grown man with the chicken pox? You may need this NyQuil more than he does."

The women share another laugh. "I may indeed."

Ella reads off the price amount, then grows serious. "Just be careful," she warns. "Don't give him any aspirin. It has potentially dangerous side effects."

Olivia pauses, feeling the icy grip of concern clutch her middle. "Really?"

"Mm-hmm. And just so you know, chicken pox is a lot worse in adults than in children. The symptoms are usually last longer with age. Believe me, I had them four years ago and I was totally miserable. I developed pneumonia a few days after the initial outbreak of the pox. I guess it's a pretty common occurrence with adults."

"God, pneumonia and the chicken pox?"

"Yeah, it's called varicella pneumonia." Ella hands her the plastic bag. "Make sure he sees his doctor."

"I will. Thanks."

"Have a good night."

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When Olivia steps back into the darkened apartment, she is surprised by the fact that the kitchen light is on. This means Elliot is actually up and on his feet. "El?" she calls out, wondering what he is doing. He rounds the corner stiffly, scratching his side, looking dazed and she wonders if he is sleepwalking. "What are you doing?"

"I needed a glass of water," he mumbles. His eyes grow inquisitive when he notices that she holds a plastic bag full of supplies. "Where did you go?"

She opens the plastic bag and rummages through it, then locates what she is searching for. She pulls it out and holds it in front of him for his inspection. "Feel like taking a bath?" Elliot grins slightly as he takes the box of oatmeal bath, looking as though he is a bit embarrassed.

"Anything helps, I guess." He turns the thing over in his hands to read the directions, when Olivia wordlessly places a cool hand against the skin of his forehead. His eyes flit up to meet hers, blue meeting brown. The small grin is creeping its way back onto his face, so she removes her palm and rubs it against the other nervously, taking a quick step backward. "How's my forehead?" he asks humorously.

"Still a little warm," she says, one side of her mouth lifting mirthlessly.

Elliot turns the box over and studies it, eyebrows raised. "I can't remember the last time I took a bath."

Olivia's mind tries to scour up the image of full-grown Elliot sitting in a tub and it causes her to snicker. He shoots her a derisive look. "Sorry," she laughs, then sobers quickly. "But seriously, the oatmeal bath is supposed to help with the itching and the warm water might make it easier to fall back to sleep."

He nods. "All right," he says and heads off to his bathroom. He turns to face her after a few steps. "You heading into work soon or are you sticking around for a little while longer?" He sounds so damn hopeful that she can't help herself.

"I can hang out for a bit. I still have a few hours before I need to go in. Plus, I brought donuts in case you're hungry and tired of moldy takeout."

Elliot's grin is lopsided. He seems relieved. "Not sure I'm that hungry, but feel free to dig in."

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Olivia's mind is on Elliot all day while she works, churning constantly as she sits at her desk. She stares at her partner's empty chair across from her, studying the threadbare fabric, the few strands that have escaped from the stitching. The day is not necessarily quieter without his presence, as it usually seems to be more active when one from the unit is out sick, in court or taking care of other matters. She is currently trying to get some paperwork done, but finds it nearly impossible as her focus is continually drifting back to Elliot, and how she left him earlier in the morning. The oatmeal bath had done the trick apparently, because he'd returned to his bedroom after climbing into some comfortable clothes and sitting on the couch for about ten minutes. He had begun to drift off, so she'd instructed that he should go to bed and he'd mumbled an apology and complied.

He'd been grouchy as all hell when she nudged him awake to remind him to make a doctor's appointment, and his fever hadn't seemed to be any better or worse. She supposes this isn't too surprising, considering he had just broken out in the rash yesterday. She contemplates calling him to see if he's done what she's asked, but wonders if that will be the right thing, since she wants him to rest as much as possible and doesn't want to seem too much like a mother hen.

She thinks back to just six hours earlier; Elliot had been in the bathroom for what she deemed was an excessive amount of time to sit in a tub when she decided to check on him, when she'd finally figured that she could spare herself some embarrassment if she considered the intrusion as a real concern for his wellbeing. Olivia chuckles quietly as she thinks of Elliot's horrified expression.

"El?" she asked, knocking on the door a couple times before pushing the door open a crack. "You okay in here? You've been in the tub for an hour..."

Elliot was sitting on his toilet, a towel wrapped loosely around his waist while he worked at applying calamine lotion to each spot. His eyes seized hers and his cheekbones quickly darkened into a self-conscious shade of red. "Liv-" he rasped and paused his hand in midair with the white lotion on his fingertips.

Olivia smiled shyly, unable to avoid glancing at his bare skin. "Sorry." She searched desperately for something to talk about to distract him from the fact that she was staring at her almost naked partner. "Need me to get your back for you?"

He watched her for a moment, the look on his face teetering between cautionary timidity to something else that she didn't want to over-analyze. "Sure." He continued applying the lotion to his forearm, then grabbed the towel to keep it from slipping off of his body. He tightened the hold the fabric had on him and tucked a corner further around his waist, then handed Olivia the bottle and faced the sink in his bathroom, gripping the counter and ducking his head away from the accusatory mirror.

She squeezed a dollop of the calamine onto her left palm and positioned herself behind Elliot, briefly taking a moment to admire the broadness of his shoulders and the way his waist fell into a seamless "v." She dipped her fingers into the lotion and began to lightly apply the substance onto every offending spot on his skin, and each time she could see a small shift in the muscles of his back and shoulders. Olivia hurried through the process faster than she probably should have, because she wasn't sure if she could take much more of the warmth of his skin under the pads of her fingers.

Elliot held his gaze at the sink drain the entire time Olivia worked on the infuriating blisters, and when he noticed a lull in her application of the calamine, he chanced a look and caught her stare in the reflection of the mirror. The look in her eyes unnerved him, and not in a bad way. It made him feel less like her partner and more like a recently separated man.

He cleared the charged air. "Thanks, Liv. I think I can get it from here."

She made a quick smile, glancing to the side. "Welcome." She moved a few inches away and toward the door, noticing the immediate change in the temperature. Either it was suddenly stifling, or her body was on fire. "I'll just be out here." She opened the door, and then turned abruptly. "Need anything?"

Elliot shook his head wordlessly, and watched the back of her head as she exited the bathroom.

Olivia jumps in her seat, startled by Fin's voice a few feet away from her. "Hey, Liv, is it true Elliot came down with the chicken pox?" The laughter in his voice is hard to miss.

She rolls her eyes. "Well, not confirmed, but that's what it appears to be."

"I'd hate to be around him while he has that. Damn, it's hard enough to deal with his cranky ass, just imagine what he's like now?"

Olivia smiles and turns back to her paperwork, then picks up her phone. She'll just make sure Elliot has actually called the doctor like she asked.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Elliot?" she asks, the coddling tone in her voice even more apparent over his cell.

He wants to throw the thing out the window, but answers her instead knowing that will be a losing battle. "Hmm?" His head is pounding against his temples and his throat feels as though someone has scraped it raw with sand paper.

"Have you called your doctor yet?"

He sighs, rubbing his free hand against his eyes, which feel sore themselves. "Not yet."

"Do you want me to do that for you?" She sounds infuriatingly over-anxious.

"No," he mumbles. "I'll do it."

"Okay. Do it right after we hang up."

"I will."

"See you later tonight."

"Bye." He hangs up his cell phone, and then pulls it away at arm's length, where he can study it before him. The display reads the time at 1:30 in the afternoon. Elliot knows his doctor's office number by heart, so he quickly dials it and waits for the receiving end to pick up.

"Dr. Crowley's office, this is Dana speaking."

Elliot clears his throat, then regrets it when the action causes it to hurt even more. He will not be surprised in the least if his voice falls victim to this illness. "Yeah, my name is Elliot Stabler, and I would like to make an appointment."

"How do you spell the last name?"

"S-T-A-B-L-E-R."

A quick pause. "What's the purpose of the appointment?"

"I think I might have the chicken pox."

"Uh-oh," she laughs. "What are your symptoms?"

Elliot rolls his eyes. "Uh, fever, sore throat, and rashes all over my body."

She is quiet for a few seconds, and he can hear the clicking noises of her fingernails hitting a keyboard. "We're full for today, Mr. Stabler, but let me speak to Dr. Crowley and see if I can't get you fit in today."

"Thanks."

"Can I get a call back number?"

"Sure." Elliot rambles off his personal cell, then hangs up with the secretary and falls back against his pillow, placing his phone next to his alarm clock, preparing to completely ignore everyone and everything for a while longer.

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Twenty minutes later, he is just settling into a nice, quiet slumber when his cell phone jangles near his ear. He opens his weary eyes and stretches his arm to the left, swiping with his exposed hand and snatches the phone off of the table. He jabs at the screen to press 'accept' and falls back against his pillows.

"Yeah." He expects the voice on the other end to be Olivia.

"Mr. Stabler?" the cautious female voice replies back. The receptionist from his doctor's office. Ah.

"Speaking."

"This is Dana from Dr. Crowley's office. We were unable to fit you in today, but he would like for you to be seen by a doctor as soon as possible, so he recommends visiting an urgent care clinic or an emergency room."

Elliot is frustrated by this, and wonders why in the hell he can't be seen today by his own doctor since he pays so much out of his ass in insurance. "Is there any reason why I can't just come in tomorrow?" He palms his forehead, feeling the tension mounting.

"Dr. Crowley feels it is necessary to be seen quickly. If you do have the chicken pox, you'll need to begin taking anti-viral medication right away so that it will work effectively. It'll make the probability of developing pneumonia less likely."

"I have to take anti-virals? I think I'd rather just tough it out." Elliot thinks back to the anti-retrovirals he took years ago after a scare with HIV. His insides clench nervously.

"Taken at least twenty-four hours after the initial rash outbreak, it should greatly reduce the chance of developing any complications that adult chicken pox can cause. It'll also cut down the convalescence."

He sighs, defeated. "All right. I'll go in to the ER."

They hang up and he pushes on the button at the top of his phone, staring at the ceiling. He thinks about calling his partner, and wonders if she is busy. He knows that Olivia will be more than willing to drive him to the hospital, but what he really wants to do is go back to sleep. The exhaustion is pulling at his eyelids, so he lets his head hit his pillow and drifts off almost immediately.

The loud ring in his ear reminds him that his phone is still in his hand and he growls out a few choice words for whoever is bothering him. "What?" he grumbles after accepting the call and shoving it against his ear.

"Hey, El."

Olivia.

He is reminded of what the secretary said just a short while ago and knows he must get up. "Something wrong?"

"Just checking to see how you're doing." She sounds uncertain, very uncharacteristic to her usual demeanor.

"You really want to know? Itchy. In all the wrong places."

She chuckles and the sound warms his middle.

"And my doctor wants me to visit the ER."

"What for?"

"They can't get me in and they think it's necessary for me to be seen right away."

The sunny timber in her voice changes to unease. "Do they think that it's serious?"

Elliot rubs a hand over his short hair. "The secretary said it's important to start taking anti-virals at least twenty-four hours after the rash appears or something like that."

Olivia pauses briefly. "Do you want me to take you?"

He stares at his unnaturally bright room and for a fraction of a second wonders why it is so strange to see the sunlight and shadows play across his walls. He knows the answer easily. He spends most of his time laying in the same manner staring at the walls when they are dark.

He thinks about sitting behind the wheel while he feels so shitty and decides having her drive may not be such a bad idea. "Yeah, why not." It'll be nice to have someone to talk with while waiting what he assumes will be five hours before being seen by overrun emergency room personnel. He'll be lucky to get out of the place while the sun is still out.

"All right. I'll talk to Cragen and call you when I get there."

"'Kay." He sits up with a groan that makes him think of an old man and grimaces at the notion of him being that advanced in age. The t-shirt he threw to the ground in his sleep is lying in a crumpled heap near his feet and he reaches down, grabbing it and tossing it over his head. He catches sight of the blisters on his arms, which have become redder and angrier. He itches all over and he rubs his palm over his cheek, thinking incessantly how wonderful it would feel just to satisfy a little bit of that maddening itch. He hopes the doctor he sees gives him a nice sedative so he can sleep through this whole ordeal.

He's lounging in the front room in his gray hoodie and a pair of jeans when his partner raps on the door lightly. He gets up and opens his door, greeting her with a tired half-smile. She looks just as worn-out as he does; the evidence is in the puffy, dark circles under her eyes.

"Ready to go?" she asks. If she is exhausted, her voice doesn't reveal it.

"Yep."

She silently surveys his physical appearance, probably looking for something he can't see himself. "How's the fever?"

Elliot shrugs. "I don't know. I think it's gone."

The two turn and head down the hallway towards the exit. "This is going to be fun."

He smiles. "Hey, no one's making you go with me."

She frowns at him comically. "Come on," she says as she pushes the 'down' button to the elevator at the end of the hall. "What would you do with all the time you have ahead of you?"

"Scratching sounds nice."

Olivia shakes her head. "You better watch yourself, Stabler."

He grins and the two traipse into the elevator after the doors swing open.

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Elliot is impatiently tapping his fingers on his thigh as the hospital staff and the intermittent patient passes by him and Olivia. The place is overrun with people. That's not too surprising for a triage center in lower Manhattan, but to his disappointment, this means they are stuck toughing out a lengthy stay in the waiting area with the crowd and he must endure plenty of curious or horrified stares from the other occupants of the room. He is slouching in the stiff plastic chair with his arms crossed over his chest, allowing his chin to sit upon his collarbone.

The admit clerk had handed Elliot a respiratory mask similar to a surgeon's, with specific instructions to cover his face for the safety of the public. Elliot had initially growled his response, his raw throat enhancing the petulance of his tone, but Olivia had smacked his arm and agreed that it'd be no problem. An hour and a half had passed before a triage nurse bothered to take his name and insurance information, boredly snapping a hospital bracelet around his wrist, then directed him to get comfortable because the wait was still fairly long.

"What's the hold up?" Elliot had asked, his skin crawling with the urge to appease the itch. "All I need is for someone to write a prescription for an anti-viral and then I can be on my merry way."

The clerk doesn't even pull her eyes away from her computer screen. "I'm sorry, sir. You'll have to wait like the rest of our patients."

"Come on, Elliot," Olivia says softly.

The young woman finally peers up at them. "It's a full moon tonight. We always see a surge in activity when it comes out." She narrows her eyes. "We have a lovely selection of magazines if you would like to read as you wait." She motions at the waiting area, then stands up and wanders away, no longer interested in assisting them.

"Gee," Elliot says angrily. "Thanks."

Olivia huffs a soft laugh next to him as he glares dagger after the woman's retreating form. "You sure do bring out the best in people." She shoves his hand away from his face when he rubs at his cheek. "Quit scratching!"

Elliot makes an annoyed sound from beneath the mask. "It itches! This stupid thing is making it worse!" He tugs it down below his chin and swipes his mouth in irritation.

"Put it back on, El." He turns his head and raises his eyebrows.

"Yes, ma'am."

Olivia shakes her head and laughs, then grows serious. "What if you infect an elderly person or someone with a compromised immune system and they get sick? Come on, you big baby." She moves the filtered paper mask back over his mouth and nose and he sighs indignantly, and then readjusts his posture when the slouch starts to hurt his neck. "Be good and maybe I'll reward you with a dinner on me. But you have to keep the mask on and no scratching at all whatsoever."

"I'd take you up on that offer if I was hungry," he sighs, pulling the elastic strings back around his ears.

She peers at him worriedly, squashing the urge to touch his forehead. "When was the last time you ate anything?"

He ponders the thought, but comes up empty and shrugs. She is about to respond when Elliot's name is finally called to a triage room. She follows him into the little cubicle that has a messy desk and medical equipment crowding the small space. Olivia takes a seat in one of the chairs as he plops untidily next to her. The nurse grins at the two knowingly.

"Looks like you've had an eventful day," she says sarcastically. "How long have you had these blisters?" She touches one on his forehead, testing it briefly.

Olivia answers for him. "It's been about, I'd say, a day now, right?" She turns her head at her partner for an affirmation. "You went home around five yesterday."

Elliot nods, unsure. "Sounds about right."

The nurse records their words onto a chart, then grabs her stethoscope and a mechanized blood pressure cuff. He shrugs out of his gray zip-up hoodie and offers his left arm. She wraps it around his bicep and pushes a button. The device beeps after about thirty seconds of silence and Elliot's uncomfortable squirming. "BP is a little on the high side."

She blows on the probe of her stethoscope and presses into his chest over his t-shirt. She moves it around, stoically listening to his heart, then his lungs. "Hmm. I don't know what to make of your lungs. I don't hear a rattle, but your breathing is a little on the shallow side." She pushes a couple buttons on the blood pressure device and attaches a pulse oximeter clip to his index finger.

Olivia observes the machine nervously, noticing the 95 flashing on the screen and the LED lights that moved with his heartbeat. "Is that normal?" she asks indicating the number.

The nurse has a thoughtful expression gracing her features. "It's not terrible, but we'd like to see his pulse ox around 98 if not higher." She pulls out a hospital-grade thermometer, placing it into a container, where it captures a protective seal and pushes the mask aside to place the device under his tongue. It beeps after just a few seconds. "Temp's 101.4."

She leans down with a speculum in hand and inspects his throat, making a sympathetic noise. "Pretty colorful in there." She pauses and bites her lip, appearing unsure of her next move. "Well, it looks like the chicken pox. I'm going to try to get you red-lined to a doctor as soon as I can. I'm concerned that too much time has passed for the anti-viral to work. But you do still need to be examined by a doctor. He'll be able to diagnose you officially."

Elliot sighs impatiently. "If I can't take the medication, I'm not sure what good seeing a doctor's going to do for me."

The nurse frowns. "You'll need a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. It's more prevalent in adults with chicken pox. It has the potential to be fatal, so I don't want you to ignore your symptoms or treat this like it's nothing. Trust me, it's definitely something."

Olivia is officially worried now.

"Why don't you put your mask back on and follow me," the nurse says, and leads them through the double doors to the emergency room.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Red-lining" Elliot to the emergency area has ensured that he will see a doctor much quicker than the typical wait for the standard patient, and Olivia is certainly grateful for that. She spends plenty of time in hospitals interviewing victims of sexual crimes or children that have endured horrifying accounts of unimaginable trauma to develop an intense hatred for the place. She thinks it may be more than that; it's also the way the rooms look and smell that makes her despise it so much. And she's unfortunately had to spend her own duration in hospital beds, as well as her partner. Police work sometimes includes these kinds of ill-fated visits.

Elliot has been instructed to remove his shirt in order to replace it with one of the lovely spotted hospital gowns that she knows he cannot stand. He'd rather sit shirtless than have to put one on. "I can keep my pants on, right?" he asks uncertainly, looking slightly horrified at the notion that she'll be able to see his backside with one wrong turn.

The nurse nods sympathetically. "Yes, you can keep your pants on." She sets his medical chart into a plastic holder on the front of his door and closes it behind her, leaving Elliot and Olivia alone. He sets about yanking his t-shirt over his head, exposing his naked flesh for her to pretend to avoid seeing. She ducks her head, apparently bashful.

"You want me to give you some space?" she wonders, unsure why she is even asking.

Elliot slides his arms into the gown and allows the back to hang open loosely. He frowns. "Why would I need space?"

"Well, I don't know. You aren't feeling claustrophobic from my constant presence yet?" Olivia hates the way she sounds right now. Unsure. Vulnerable.

He stares at her with an odd expression, mostly covered by his respirator. "Olivia," he begins, and the sound of her full name is strange to her ears since he has made it a habit to call her by her nickname most of the time. "You're always welcome around me. I know, I may be a bastard sometimes, but having you here makes my life less miserable. I'm glad you're with me. God knows my kids can't stand me and Kathy would rather saw off her own leg than be in the same room. I just hope you're not sick of my ass."

She is inspecting the frayed cuticles of her fingernails without realizing it, and glances up to peek at him, probably appearing abnormally coy. "That's good," she says, the side of her mouth quirking up, and she answers drolly to avoid turning the moment into something saccharine. "And if I were the sick one, I sure as hell would be kicking your ass to the curb."

"Hey," he responds, pressing a hand to his chest. "I kid, but you aim to hurt." He tugs on the mask and whips it off to the side, tossing it onto the rolling table to the right of him. After a moment, he lowers against the bed, bored with reading the medical advertisements and public awareness posters on the surrounding walls. He presses the power button on the remote attached to his bed and the little TV in the corner of the room comes to life.

The two detectives sit in silence, straining to listen to the uproarious talk show since the volume doesn't seem to go any louder than above a whisper. For the next twenty minutes Elliot makes outrageous guesses regarding the paternity results of the show's assortment of guests.

Finally, a knock interrupts the latest prediction of fatherhood with the dysfunctional family members on screen and Olivia and Elliot instantly shift from laidback relaxing to tense apprehension. The door opens with a loud clack and a young woman pokes her head in.

"Detective Stabler?" she asks as she pushes the rest of the way through and into the small room. She looks almost too young to be a certified doctor, Olivia thinks, as she gives her the once-over. He nods at the white-coated woman, his face trained into a serious frown. She marvels at how easily he changes his demeanor when he needs to; he seems like a completely different person from moments ago.

"Yes," he mumbles, straightening into a sitting position and pulling the sleeves of the gown around his shoulders a little more.

She is clutching his medical chart. "My name is Dr. Easton." He bites his bottom lip solemnly. A side of her mouth twists into a comical grin. "So, the chicken pox, eh?"

Olivia glances at her partner and she can't keep herself from matching the laughing expression of the doctor all of a sudden. He shoots her a warning gaze from the bed. The doctor goes about her business checking him over, conducting the same kind of precursory tests as the nurse, but she pauses longer over his lungs. She moves a stethoscope over several places on his chest and back and then finally stands.

Elliot's eyes are wide with concern when she wraps the device around her collar. "So, what's up?"

Dr. Easton grimaces and he knows it can't be good. "I noticed a slight crackle in your right lung. I would like for you to get a chest x-ray so I can see the extent of the infection, and then some blood work to determine what kind of course of action I'll be taking to treat the disease."

Olivia's stomach feels like it has hit her shoes. "You mean he has pneumonia?" She remembers the clerk at Walgreens and her forewarning. This means a lengthy recuperation and extended misery. Partnering with somebody else and staring at his empty desk for two or more weeks.

The doctor notices her unease instantly. "It's at the early stages if anything," she says as she touches Olivia's arm reassuringly. "I'm going to get him started on antivirals right away. It should stop the infection and make the recovery much quicker."

Elliot is watching the two women dejectedly from his seat on the edge of the bed. "My lungs feel fine."

"Like I said, it's early onset. But it's there. The x-ray will show us how extensive the pneumonia is."

He slumps visibly, realizing that he cannot get out of this even if he wants to. If he tries to ignore the seriousness of the situation and leave, Olivia will probably hogtie him to the x-ray machine.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another half hour passes by and Olivia is twiddling her thumbs in the same room, looking at the TV in the corner without watching anything before her. She's pretty sure she has focused on the show for its entire duration on screen, but she has not seen any of it. If someone were to ask her what the episode was about, she'd fail miserably. After being poked and prodded, blood drawn, and temperature taken once again, he is whisked away to an x-ray room.

Her partner has been gone the entire time, and she is unable to keep herself from imagining that the pneumonia is worse than originally thought. She breaks out into a cold sweat considering what could happen to him. The illness can kill people, and she mentally balks at the thought.

She climbs to her feet and wanders around the room, hands at her hips, antsy and squashing the urge to burst out the door and down the hallways in search of Elliot.

She is turned around when he comes back, and she swivels in time to see his glum face. "Hey," she says, making room for him to sit once again on the bed. "So, what'd they see?"

Dr. Easton follows him in, holding the black and white films in her hands. She closes the trio into the room and sits onto a rolling stool. "There's a small streak in his right lung. It's a good thing you came in when you did, Elliot. If you had waited to go to your doctor's office until tomorrow, you'd have a full-blown case by then."

Olivia quietly thanks the receptionist at his doctor's office for being persistent, but the reality sinks in and she grimaces in sympathy. "So what does that mean for recovery? How long do you think he'll be out of work?"

Easton shrugs, a thoughtful look on her face. "I don't know. It's really dependent on several factors—taking all of the medication, rest, and the way his own body recuperates that determines when he'll be well enough to return." She walks over to an x-ray viewing box and places the films against the glowing surface, revealing his lungs. She points to something indiscernible to the detectives, but obvious to her in her expertise. She traces a fine white line. "This is where we've found the streak. It's not a lot, but if untreated, can easily get worse."

She tucks his x-rays into a large manila folder and exits, sending in the nurse that came before her, armed with a small cup of water, his first dose of medication, his prescription and release papers. After he signs the dotted line at the bottom of the stack, he is free to go, but not before being informed that he must go straight home, take every last pill he is prescribed, rest, and return if things seem to get any worse. He's also told to make an appointment as soon as possible for follow up.

When the two of them finally exit the sliding doors for Olivia's car, the sun has indeed sunken in the Western skies. The air is biting and cold and Elliot hurriedly throws on his grey hoodie, remembering that he is only covered by a thin t-shirt.

"I should call Cragen," Olivia says softly as she closes herself into the driver's seat. "You'll be out for a few weeks. And the union will need to be informed of your medical leave." She sighs, appearing sad, and he can't help it when he reaches out to touch her elbow in reassurance. She acknowledges his kind gesture by chewing on the inside of her cheek.

"What's wrong?" he asks, trying to look as sincere as possible around all the red bumps and lingering white spots left by calamine lotion.

"I was just thinking that the next few weeks will be pretty dull without you crashing around the precinct like a bull in a China shop," she turns to him and they share a smile. "Plus, I'll probably be paired with Munch or Fin, and you know how they are."

"Yeah, good luck with that."

Olivia shakes her head and turns her key in the ignition, bringing the car to life.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cough had started making its presence by the time they'd left the pharmacy. It is a dry hack, but she recognizes it as something ominous, like a monster hiding within and waiting to fully emerge. Elliot had taken a dose of Acyclovir at the hospital, but she worries that the timing will be off and they'll be too late. Will the antiviral be effective?

When they return to his place, she forces him to eat some chicken noodle soup, but he whines his way through dinner and she finally succumbs to setting the picked at food in his sink.

"I'm not really that hungry." Elliot closes his eyes and settles into his couch cushions again. He kicks up his feet, finding time as she sits next to him to furiously scratch the side of his neck. She scoffs and bats at the offending hands.

"Elliot! Stop it, or you'll scar."

"That's like telling me to quit breathing," he says grumpily. "They're even worse. Liv, please put me out of my misery. The gun's in my bedside table drawer, fully loaded. Do it quickly."

She elbows him. "Knock it off. I'm not going to shoot you. You're not the only person to ever have the chicken pox. Other people seemed to get through it without committing suicide."

Elliot fidgets impatiently and rubs his palms down the front of his pants. "The doctor didn't throw a sedative into my prescription, did she?"

"Nope," she says, sounding exasperatingly unyielding. "She did say that you can take Benadryl or NyQuil to make you sleep easier."

He finally accepts his fate and the two watch a crime documentary on the ID network featuring Claus Von Bulow and the murder investigation surrounding the controversial socialite from the '80s. Olivia ends up smacking his hand periodically so that he is thwarted from effectively scratching and he grumbles irritably each time. Eventually he gets tired of her determined actions to prevent his itching and gets up with a long, audible stretch.

"I think I'm going to take a couple Ibuprofen."

She narrows her discerning eyes, concerned. "What's wrong?"

He shrugs, his features drawn and fatigued. "I don't know."

"Is the fever back?" she asks, immediately palming his forehead without a second thought. Sure enough, the skin underneath is overly warm, and she can feel frustration rise. "Yep, that's what it feels like. Damn, El. You can't make being sick easy, can you?"

"Never."

He heads to his bathroom, opens the mirrored medicine cabinet, and finds the pain reliever quickly, tossing two into his mouth. "I should be good in about half an hour," he mutters around two pills when he notices her figure behind him.

Olivia leans against the door jamb of the bathroom. "Think it's all right that I take a shower?"

"Of course. You don't need to worry about asking, Liv. I'm just going to lie down."

"If I catch you scratching, I swear I will tape your fingers together."

"I'll just peel it off with my teeth."

She raises her eyebrows as a warning. "Try me, Stabler. Don't make me handcuff your hands to your bed frame." She blushes when she realizes the clear implication of her statement.

He keels over with a wheezing laugh, coughing as a result. "Olivia Benson! If I didn't know any better, I'd say that was an invitation."

"Shut your pie-hole, you jackass. Don't hurt yourself."

His silly grin drops into something more serious. "I'm kidding, you know that."

She exhales. "I know. But I'll be checking on you when I'm done."

"All right." Elliot mumbles as he falls to his bed as she moves into the small room. "I'll keep the handcuffs ready."

"I heard that," he hears from the other side of the door.

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Long after she is done with her shower, Olivia leaves a voice message on her captain's desk phone informing him the unfortunate news of her partner's sick leave and kicks back onto Elliot's couch with a cup of her tea that she'd nearly forgotten about. She drinks it slowly as she watches late night TV, and thinks that her apartment is much more relaxed and appealing, and that she should just try to entice him to crash over at her place if she's going to play nursemaid.

She hears a coughing noise from the bedroom and knows that the small streak of pneumonia is now very present.

Olivia creeps into Elliot's dark room, treading as quietly as possible to avoid waking him up, but when her eyes adjust to the darkness, she notices that he is propped up onto an elbow, already reaching for his bedside lamp to switch on the light. He clears his throat, and although he is not looking directly at her, she knows that he's aware of her presence.

"Hey," he mumbles, rubbing a hand over his head.

"I can hear it now," she says softly, speaking of the wet sound underneath the cough. "I can't believe it showed up that fast."

"Hm," he responds, and then finally looks up at her. "Did I wake you?"

She shakes her head grimly. "Not really, but I don't expect to sleep very well tonight anyway." She studies him for a moment. "Are you sure you'll be all right, El? Maybe we should go back to the ER. They'll be able to monitor you closer there."

"I'll be okay," he says in a voice usually suited for children or victims, the tone that is meant to soothe. She'd normally shrug that kind of response off as nothing more than mulish obstinacy, but he looks pretty sincere and she yields.

"Okay," she whispers. Her hands wring together uselessly and she stands awkwardly as if she is unsure of herself.

He grins gently, knowingly. "Would you sleep easier if you camped out in here with me?"

She throws him a look like a blow. "You mean like on the floor? No thank you. I like my back the way it is."

He almost laughs out loud. "No, over here next to me."

She is genuinely surprised. "El," she warns, backing away uneasily looking as if she is an animal being caged. "I don't think that's a good idea."

He plays it as carefully as he can. "Come on, Liv, I'm sick. It's not like I'm going to get handsy on you. I just want to sleep, so if you want to be thinking clearly at work tomorrow, you'll need to get at least a full six hours. And in case you're worried about it, I can't infect you."

"Elliot, don't play stupid. You know what I mean. We're partners…it would be against procedure."

"Since when have I ever cared about policy and procedure? No seriously, it's completely innocent, honest. Scouts honor, I swear you'll be as safe as a church." He puts up a few fingers, and she's unsure if he's ever confessed to being a Boy Scout as a child and if he's allowed to use that promise, but she doesn't feel like questioning him on that when he looks at her with wide eyes and an impish grin. "How about this, I'll lay on top of the blankets, and you can lie underneath them."

"You need to be covered. No way."

"All right, then. You sleep on top of the blankets."

She watches him with a funny glint in her eyes, then finally moves toward him and sinks down nervously. They both lie on their backs stiffly. "Yeah, I'll be able to sleep a full six hours tonight," she says sarcastically.

Elliot lets out a chuckle that turns into a fit of coughing. When he catches his breath, he says in a low tone, "You're making my act of chivalry into something weird."

"Chivalry is dead, El."

"I promise, I'll be a good boy and stay on my side of the bed."

Olivia kicks off her shoes and settles onto the mattress, noting that the bed, the pillows, hell, the entire room smells like his aftershave and she can feel butterflies race around in her stomach at the prospect of what could happen between them if they decided to throw caution to the wind.

She attempts to push the girlish yearning away, trying to avoid being immersed in emotions that she'd encountered throughout their tenure as partners but had to suppress in order to function effectively as a detective. Early on she had been idealistic and starry-eyed, but she had known that it was a pointless endeavor since he was married and they were partners. A crush was all it had been and all it could stay.

Unfortunately for her, the attraction has remained over the years, and it means that she has kept men at a distance because none of them have been able to measure up to Elliot.

She hears him sigh and a tiny, nearly imperceptible rattle accompanies it, "Good night, Liv."

"Good night," she answers.

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A while passes and Elliot falls into a fitful slumber in which he tosses agitatedly, coughing so often that Olivia finally gets up from her spot and digs around in his medicine cabinet for the NyQuil she'd purchased much earlier that day. She pours him a cupful and rounds to his side of the bed to stand before him.

She sits down on the edge and nudges his shoulder. "Elliot," she says, realizing that he is radiating heat. Feverish again. His eyes open slightly, but they are glassy and distant and she wouldn't be shocked if he is delirious. "Take this. It'll help you sleep better."

He pushes himself up and drinks the medicine without arguing or any complaints. "Thanks," he croaks, and falls back to his pillow.

The shot of NyQuil seems to do the trick—Elliot is out like a light after that. He's so exhausted that he has not moved for nearly a half hour, no tossing or turning, not even to cough. His breathing has leveled out and is heavy—she can feel the soft warmth of his exhalation skim over the bare skin of her neck.

Olivia should be sleeping, but she cannot help the way her body responds by being hypersensitive to the noises he makes while resting, the heat of his nearness, and mostly, the proximity of his presence and how strange it is to be so close to him. They have never slept in the same bed before. Slept in the same room, sure, when a case is deemed too urgent, too important for their release home and shacking up in the crib is in order. She'd lie on the lumpy cot on one of the bottom bunks across from him, facing away but listening the same way she is now. Sometimes he'd find a fitful sleep, but a typical stay in the crib involved simply spreading out onto the cots and lying quietly in companionable silence.

Olivia startles when he does move, and she feels a heavy arm fall over the curve of her waist. She is stunned into immobility, especially when he caresses the soft part of her abdomen and pulls in his direction until her backside is flush against the front of his. She wonders if he is at all aware of what he is doing, especially when he nuzzles her hair for a moment, then settles his head onto the pillow, lips pressing into the nape of her neck.

Her heart is beating frantically at the contact, and she contemplates the terrible irony of having a heart attack here in Elliot's bed and by a single unconscious touch. The butterflies are back with a vengeance, fluttering against her ribcage. She's afraid to move, because if he wakes up, he'll realize his error and she'll have to endure the embarrassment of the situation. She can't quell the growing excitement and desire inside of her, the warmth that is spreading in spite of her attempt to ignore it. She curses her body for betraying her, and she longs for sleep to take her so that she can pretend like none of this is happening.

He seems content with the closeness, because he does not make any other movements except for his breathing and the rhythmic beat of his pulse. She lets her eyes fall and concentrates on the cadence of his slumbering body, and she finally finds reprieve in Elliot's arms.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She is bolted awake by the noise of her cell phone resting next to her head on the table, and she fumbles for the chiming device while cursing furiously. She checks the time and groans.

5:39 a.m.

God forbid she actually gets more than a few hours rest for fuck's sake. Olivia presses 'talk' on her cell phone screen, pressing it to her ear just as Elliot stirs against her.

"Benson," she says sleepily.

"Olivia, sorry to wake you, but we're going to need your presence bright and early."

Cragen.

She rubs her face just as Elliot rolls away and she almost complains when the heat of his nearness is taken away and replaced by the freezing air of his bedroom. "What's up?" she asks and watches as he blinks awake.

Cragen's sigh blows static into the receiving end of his phone. "Looks like another attack at Hudson. One of the work study students from their library—Wilson's at it again. This time he took it a step further. She's in the ER at the moment clinging to life."

"Shit," she curses. "Is she alert? Able to give a statement?"

"The docs say she's in and out of it. They're worried about the head injury, said that there could be some brain swelling that it is potentially life threatening. I've got Munch with her right now just in case this gets upped to a homicide investigation."

"Was there any evidence of a sexual assault?"

"Looks like it. Warner is prepping for a rape kit. I'm heading over to the university library right now. I'm going to need you to meet me there."

Olivia and Elliot share a glance. "All right, I'll see you shortly."

Cragen clears his throat. "So, how is your partner? Is it the chicken pox?"

She frowns. "You didn't get my message?"

"I just woke up twenty minutes ago, Olivia. What's going on?"

"Elliot has varicella pneumonia. He'll probably be out for about two to three weeks."

"Great. Just what we need. I suppose I'll have to take care of that later. See you soon."

"Yeah." Olivia ends the call and sits up, exhaustion rolling over her in waves. "That was the captain. There was another attack."

"Wilson?" he asks, yawning dramatically and rubbing his forearms. "Sorry. I know you didn't sleep much."

She shakes her head. "It's not your fault, El." She slips her shoes on and pauses to stare at her feet. "I think I may crash at work afterward. And I think I should probably stop sleeping over here. At least for a night or two."

Elliot looks at her with a combination of apprehension and petulance. "Why?"

"Elliot, I haven't slept more than five hours in two days! Your place is always cold and you do get handsy in your sleep. I miss my apartment, and I probably have a huge stack of mail waiting for me."

He chews on his lip, knowing full well that he has no right to demand that she stay at his apartment and that the only reason he wants her there is because he is lonely and likes her company. "If that's what you want…"

She nods and then faces him, indignantly waiting for him to blow up on her. She is aggravated when he simply stares back at her gloomily in all his chicken pox glory. She can't help but feel bad. "I guess if you want to, I'll pick you up after work and take you to my place."

"Okay," he mutters, and watches her walk out of his bedroom before he can say another word.


	3. Chapter 3

Two days with a laughable amount of rest and the fuzzy effects of sleep deprivation have made her robotic in her movements and zombie-like in her interactions with witnesses and her colleagues. She's thankful that Munch is in charge of sitting with the victim and that the witness statements have already been gathered. She's worried that she will not only immediately forget what is said, but that she will appear detached and uncaring in her state. The lights of the squad room are a little too bright, and the noises are intermingling together so that it all sounds like a dull roar.

Fifteen minutes of blank staring at her computer screen and she is finally convinced that she needs to crash or her body will make sure to do it against her will. She fears that she may end up incapacitated for several hours, but she mentally shrugs. Better to do it than regret it later.

Olivia checks her watch. It reads just after 9 a.m. She'll set her phone's alarm to go off at noon so that she can call Elliot to remind him to take his medication and to shove food down her throat.

Just before she stands to head toward the crib, Munch saunters into headquarters with the stride of a man on a mission, a familiar sight to see from her perspective. Normally from her partner who prefers to assert himself most decisively when the crime or the victim snags at his emotions and he starts treading all over everybody's personal space in his zeal.

Her eyes follow him as he stops at his desk and dumps his coat over the back of his chair. "What's up?" she asks, swiveling in her seat to face him.

Munch sits on the edge of his desk, folds his arms, and sighs. She knows that whatever news he is bringing can't be good with the way he hesitates. She longs for Elliot's concentrated glowering in the pen; Munch's shaded glasses conceal his frustration. She is unable to determine what the man is feeling when she can't see his eyes. "Janeal McIntyre was placed in an induced coma. The swelling in her brain resulted from a skull fracture, and the only way to avoid permanent brain damage was to put her under heavy barbiturates."

Olivia grimaces. "At least she's still alive."

"That's if she's not brain dead when they reverse the coma."

She regards him sympathetically. "A victim in a coma is better than a dead one."

"Is it?" he asks, stoic. "Tell that to her parents, who may face the very real possibility of choosing whether to pull the plug on their 19-year-old daughter, a girl who made the mistake of going to her school library to study for her French class, or let her live out the rest of her days on life support."

"John," Olivia says succinctly, her brows rising in bewilderment. Her face feels puffy with exhaustion. "Let's take this one step at a time. Right now she's alive. We can't make any quick judgments about her condition yet."

He resigns to his paperwork, and after a long moment with the hum of soft noises around her, she finds herself drifting off. She doesn't stop her head from sinking onto her crossed arms.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Olivia walked over a grassy expanse away from the city somewhere. She'd ended up in a location shrouded in gloomy grays and blues, and the sky chose to encase the area of Lower Manhattan with an equally as depressing slate colored overcast. The green of the grass was striking in comparison to the rest of her surroundings, and she pondered this in curiosity before lifting her head. Her stomach sank in dread at the images around her.

The field she was in was dotted with morbidly familiar stones - homages to loved ones lost and new found grief - a place she tried to avoid but once a year to visit her mother. There were times when she turned out for a victim's memorial and burial service; however, she'd made it a rule to stay away unless absolutely necessary.

She narrowed her eyes to clear her vision as she continued trekking past headstone after headstone, and she could see that she was walking to a crowd dressed in black. No one moved, their heads remained fixed on what she presumed to be a freshly dug grave and the shiny casket that inhabited it. The faces were mostly a blur, except when she came closer; she recognized four within the crowd instantly.

Elliot was dressed in his stately police uniform, something she rarely saw, as it was not customary for officers of higher rank to wear such outfits unless showing respect, usually to a fallen colleague. Next to Elliot was their captain, and his craggy face had a hollow quality to it, probably from days and nights of unending stress and weariness. Fin and Munch stood to their right, also in full dress. All matching somber expressions.

Olivia crept up to them, watching the men carefully as she sidled beside them, feeling unnerved by their failure to acknowledge her presence. Instead of asking them what was going on, she peered downward to see who the unfortunate soul was.

Her heart seized at the white coffin, opened to reveal the upper half of the body inside.

It was her.

Same soft, brown streaked hair. Same sharp features that she saw in the mirror every day. Her hands were folded neatly, stiffly over the area just above her abdomen.

She would have cried out if she could breathe. Her mouth hung open in horror, a muted gasp.Olivia could feel her knees trembling and her neck ached from craning it so long, and all she could think was 'how can I be dead? How can I still feel pain if I'm dead?'

She noticed that the officers surrounding the site were disappearing in different directions, all except for Elliot. He remained, and his face was etched in stone. Passive.

He stood motionless for a moment longer, and then turned to leave. She tried to reach out to him, yell at him to wait, that she was still alive, but she could not seem to move.

She was frozen.

Olivia pushed herself forward to follow him, but her limbs move like they were encased in lead. She attempted to scream at his retreating form, which was becoming smaller with every step he took, but all that escaped her lips was a pitiful keening.

"Olivia!"

Her heart is racing when she awakens, jumping as if she's been prodded with a live wire. She looks around wildly and realizes that she is still at her desk. Fin is kneeling over her, not dressed in his uniform, but in his familiar dark jeans and leather jacket.

"Liv?" he asks again. "You okay? You were making a lot of noise over here."

Olivia sighs, thankful that she is just dreaming and then massages her neck. She can't help but feel scorn for her masochistic psyche that enjoys screwing with her even at rest. "Sorry," she whispers. She stretches out some of the kinks, and then peers at him with a look of disquiet. "How long was I asleep?"

"I dunno," he shrugs, leaning against a nearby filing cabinet. "I just got back from court."

She glances at her watch, then feels her heart flutter. She had been slumped over her desk for two solid hours and no one had bothered to awaken her? "Shit!"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ring tone over the phone is probably the single most annoying sound in the world to Olivia at the moment - that and the incessant clicking noise of Munch's retractable pen, and Fin clearing his throat every five seconds. Elliot's generic voicemail picks up her call for the sixth time and instead of leaving another message, she hangs up feeling restless and disgusted with herself. She thinks like she could easily crawl out of her skin with the combination of unease, exhaustion, and irritation gripping at her consciousness. She knows that Elliot is probably sleeping and that is why he isn't answering his cell, but his prescribed dose is twice daily, it is now almost noon, and she cannot be certain if he will remember since he is sick with pneumonia and has a head muddled by fever.

She stares at her watch, then turns to her computer and mindlessly scrolls over her work, grimacing at the weary flatness of her own words. The vacant, mechanical way she types makes it all the more obvious that autopilot has taken over for her brain.

Olivia decides she's been at her desk long enough to warrant her lunch reprieve and she stands with aching slowness. "I'm heading out," she says to nobody in particular. "Lunch."

The two men nod synchronously, engrossed in their business. Olivia shrugs into her jacket and turns, but not before she hears Munch's all-knowing sarcastic voice from his adjoined desk with his partner. "Say hi to Elliot for us, will you?"

She pivots, trying to appear unaffected by his insinuation, but she scoffs in a manner that makes her feel guilty of some unforeseen cardinal sin. The skin of her face and neck begins to burn in embarrassment.

"Why don't you give him a call yourself?" she says, refusing to look at the two men who are now giving her their full attention and grinning like a couple of sneaky eight-year-old boys.

"Well, I don't know why I'd bother. You've been trying to get ahold of him for the past half hour and he hasn't been picking up the phone." John steeples his fingers and slouches in his chair and Olivia immediately thinks that he resembles the evil villains of her childhood cartoons, and that all he is missing is his evil lap cat.

Olivia just shoots him a glare. Damn him and his knack for seeing through her bullshit. "I'll be back in an hour."

Fin chimes in merrily. "All right Liv. Give your boy a big kiss from the precinct."

She should just walk away, but their snide comments bother her for making light of the situation and for being so damn accurate. Is she that transparent? "You know, pneumonia is no laughing matter. It kills people all over the world every day. Elliot is really sick and you guys are picking on him when he's not even here to defend himself. I'm glad you clowns are getting such a good kick out of this."

They both look like they've been armed with more ammunition for entertainment, but Fin raises his hands in surrender. "Take it easy, Olivia. We don't mean to be insensitive. Elliot's going to be fine."

John nods in agreement. "Jesting is how we cope with heavy subject matter. It's a defense mechanism."

Olivia grits her teeth because she takes a lot of their lighthearted teasing all too often, especially about her male/female partnership. "Yeah well, if either of you were sick, I'd be taking it seriously. Neither of you have heard the way he sounds or have seen how bad he looks. I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate being the butt of your fucking jokes."

"Olivia," Cragen's voice calls out, firm but compassionate at the same time. "My office?"

She glances in his direction and knows, just knows that he's sending her home for the day. A small part of her hopes that he will, but she is reminded of the innocent young woman lying in a hospital bed, comatose, and she reproachfully dashes that hope. She steps quietly into the room and her captain calmly closes the door. He wanders over to stand before his large desk, crossing his arms and staring her down like a disapproving father. "Since when do you instigate petty arguments with your colleagues on the precinct floor?"

"I'm sorry, Captain. It won't happen again." Automated response.

His eyes sear through her. "What's going on, Olivia?"

She sighs, her shoulders sagging, and she knows that she must explain her behavior to her boss just enough to pacify him. "Nothing, Cap. I'm just...stressed about this case and I'm tired. I haven't slept that well these past few days."

His face remains impassive. "I won't even pretend to believe that this is just about work. I know you're worried about your partner, but you can't let your feelings get in the way with how you conduct yourself at work."

Olivia feels panic rise into her throat at the mention of these 'feelings' he so easily brings up. "Sir, I-"

He finally breaks their stare by rounding to his seat and he falls into his chair. "Don't try to explain anything. Just do me a favor, will you? Take the rest of the day off and get some sleep. I know the first thing you'll want to do is help your partner, but Elliot can take care of himself. He's a big boy."

"And what about Janeal McIntyre? Or any other woman attacked by Dirk Wilson? You expecting me to just ignore a call when they come up? You think I can't handle it?"

"That's what we have an entire precinct for, Liv. You're not the only one working this case and you certainly are not the only one bothered by it. I'll let one slide because of the additional stress of Elliot's illness, but I'll need you at one hundred percent tomorrow. Understand?"

Olivia would like to argue, but she's not sure she'll be able to keep things hidden so securely under the vest if she stays one minute longer. "Yes, Sir."

She strolls right past Munch and Fin on her way out of the precinct, thinking that before she follows her captain's orders and passes out, she'll need to prepare her apartment for her wayward partner. First, she'll try him over the phone one more time, and if he does not answer, then she'll just have to make a pit stop first.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unbeknownst to Elliot, his cell phone has been ringing incessantly, but he hasn't heard it at all, because he had cleverly turned his volume onto 'vibrate' and had been dead to the world for at least seven or eight hours unaware of his partner's concerned and repeated phone calls. He'd awakened to his face buried in his pillow and his freshly shorn fingernails reflexively scraping his forearms. He'd been doing this even in his sleep. Elliot pushes away from his comfortable bed and swipes at his cell phone next to him, presses on the home button, and then swears audibly.

Six missed calls. Olivia's cell.

His head is still a bit foggy, but he makes the returning phone call fully expecting her disdainful voice to pierce his brain. That'll be a great way to wake up, he thinks acerbically.

Olivia picks up after one ring. "Good morning, Mary Sunshine. Or should I say good afternoon? Took you long enough!" Elliot smiles with the realization that he knows her too well.

"Hey, I needed my beauty rest." His voice resonances like he's swallowed a cupful of crushed glass and he winces. He sounds deplorable.

"You put it on vibrate, didn't you?" she asks.

Elliot kicks off his blankets and sits up, letting out a yawn that ends in a mucky sounding cough. "Yeah, sorry."

"Have you been sleeping this whole time?"

He pulls his phone away and catches a glimpse of the hour, mildly shocked. "Yes, actually. Where are you?"

"I'm heading over to my place. Cragen sent me home for the day."

Elliot frowns, pushing into his chest with his free hand, feeling uneasy about the flare up of pain with each breath. "What for?"

She sighs heavily. "I don't know, getting pissed off at Munch and Fin and yelling at them in front of the captain. For starters."

"Well, that'll do it. Usually works for me."

"Oh, ha ha," she grouses. "In the meantime, a victim is comatose in the hospital and I'm on my way home to take a nap."

Elliot chews on his lip uncertainly, remembering her words from earlier that morning. "Are you still picking me up to take me over to your place?"

A few seconds pass before she finally replies. "I just need to clean things up around my apartment. I haven't even seen the inside of it for days. Give me a few hours, okay?"

He nods at the wall. "That's fine."

"Do me a favor, please?" she says doggedly. "Take your medicine. Two a day is what Dr. Easton said, and missing doses will make your body less likely to respond to the antiviral."

"Yes, mommy."

"Don't even start that shit. I've heard enough from the guys at work."

Elliot climbs to his feet and lurks down the dark hallway toward his front room to his coffee table where he had miserably tossed the prescription in his haste to sit down onto his couch as fast as possible. The pill bottle was still inside the store-issued bag. "All right. I'm taking it right as we speak."

"Good. I'll give you a call later."

"Bye."

Elliot resignedly rips open the bag and glowers accusatorially at the small white pills in the orange bottle. He'd been a bit nervous about taking the medication at the hospital last night because of the ugly memory of his HIV scare years ago. An entire month of misery had accompanied the prophylaxis and all he can remember about that time period is how jumpy and tense and thin he'd become. The hospital grade antiviral hadn't made him feel anything more than mildly nauseated and drowsy, but he still is not looking forward to it.

He downs a pill and makes himself some toast, forcing himself to finish the small meal. Forty minutes later he takes a hot shower because he is drained and cold. His thermostat says that the heat should be seventy degrees, but it feels like a freezer anyway. Elliot uses more of that oatmeal and calamine stuff, and right as he is sliding into some loose clothing, a small knock erupts at the front door.

Elliot knows that this is not Olivia. His partner will either pound on the thin panel or breeze on in. His first assumption is that the person on the other side is one of his kids or Kathy.

Sure enough, the familiar frail figure of his soon-to-be ex-wife stands huddled at his doorway. He swings it open, wondering why in the hell she has chosen to show up on a day like today.

"Kathy?" he asks, voice hoarse.

Her eyes widen at the sight of him. "Oh, my God. Elliot? What the hell is all over your face?"

He ponders how to explain his physical state more eloquently, but he simply shrugs. "Chicken pox."


	4. Chapter 4

Elliot chews his lip, assessing the sight of the woman and considering how to avoid having a conversation with his eventual ex-wife about keeping his illness under wraps without making her angry, but he figures it will be impossible to do so anyway. How would he have explained putting his kids off when his weekend inevitably arrives but he does not? She really is doing him a favor by popping up unexpectedly.

She has that all too familiar look of scathing resignation on her face despite his white flag waving smirk—the one he'd become quite accustomed to when he did not want her to be clued in on certain aspects of his career. Long suffering.

"Were you planning on telling me about this, or had you decided that surprising me would be easier to deal with? Elliot, you know how I hate surprises."

Elliot's painful hacking interrupts her irritated badgering. She rolls her eyes and sighs until he stops. "Don't tell me you have a cold, too. Geez, Elliot."

He takes an uncertain breath. "It's called varicella pneumonia. I guess adults with chicken pox are more likely to get it than kids. Don't worry, I've already seen a doctor about it."

Her eyebrows surge upward in mild shock. "You? A doctor? I never thought I'd hear those two words together in one sentence come out of your mouth unless you were forced."

"I was in a sense," he says with a side-long grin. "Olivia took me to the hospital."

"Well, thank goodness you have a partner who has some sense!" she says exasperated. "Pneumonia though? Are they sure?"

He nods, and her expression shifts to one of worry. "Are you going to be all right here by yourself? I know the way you are with taking medication, Elliot. When you were prescribed something, I'd practically have to slip it into your food to get you to take it."

Elliot waves her off, still perched against his door jamb with his arms now crossed in defiance. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

Kathy's face softens and her gaze sweeps over his looming form. "Are you eating? You look like you've lost some weight."

He just blinks. "I've been sick, Kath'. I haven't felt like eating."

She glances behind him to the dimly-lit room inside of the apartment, surveying the background skeptically. "You know, you are always welcome to come stay back at the house until you've recovered, El. The kids wouldn't mind having you there, even being as sick as you are."

Elliot shrugs, passively denying her request. He knows that it is an instinct for her to want to take care of him, but he can't help the simmering frustration bubble to the surface over how fickle her emotions have become. Just three weeks ago, she'd been on the verge of impaling him with a rusty spike and divorce had been an unyielding conclusion. She would have rather been on the other side of the world than in the same room as him. He bristles to her offer almost immediately.

"Nah, I can take care of myself."

"Elliot, I'm not asking you to crawl back into bed with me. You can take the couch if you really need to."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. She is not listening. "Kathy, lying on our lumpy couch makes my back hurt just thinking about it. Besides, even if the kids actually enjoy my company—which they won't, because they'll be in school—they aren't really going to like having to tiptoe around their sleeping dad on the couch when they want to watch TV or play video games."

"They'll get over it."

Elliot rubs his forehead with the back of his hand. "You don't think that the kids will be confused if I just show up and act like nothing is wrong, like I never left?"

Kathy purses her lips, a sure indicator that she is losing patience with him. "Elliot, all I'm offering is a week on the couch. Asking you over doesn't mean that I'm planning on ripping up the divorce papers. Trust me, our date before the judge is definitely still in full-swing."

He can hear footfalls in the hallway, the noise slowing cautiously as the person approaches. He knows it is Olivia simply by the hesitancy in her step. He is immensely relieved.

Olivia's soft, friendly voice sounds to the left, out of his line of vision. "Kathy, how are you doing?"

Kathy's blond head turns and a stiff, obligatory smile spreads across her face. Elliot steps away from his door, glancing around his almost ex-wife, his shoulders dropping at the sight of his partner. "I'm fine, Olivia, how are you?"

"I'm good," Olivia says, her eyes catching Elliot's, and they share an uncomfortable look. "So," she begins, tipping onto her heels, hands resting in the back pockets of her jeans. "How are you doing, El?"

He knows that she is avoiding mentioning that she is there to pick him up. Despite the condition of their marriage, Kathy will blow a gasket if she knows that he intends to crash at his partner's place, in fact fully intends on sleeping in her bed. Kathy had always viewed Olivia as the interloper, the catalyst to the destruction of their marriage, and even though Elliot had insisted that their partnership had always remained platonic, she'd known that an attraction had always been there.

"Uh, I'm managing," he responds, tapping his arms awkwardly. Kathy glances between the two, frowning suspiciously. Elliot attempts to steer the conversation toward work, because in a sticky situation, bringing the job into it always seems to do the trick. "What happened with the Wilson case? Any breakthroughs?"

Olivia shakes her head. "Nope. We haven't been able to get anywhere with tracking him down. Janeal McIntyre is still in a coma."

Kathy breathes a sigh of uncertainty. "Well, I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing, Elliot. I guess I'll be going now." She sweeps her gaze over the detectives for a few silent moments, and then turns away.

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Olivia feels much more at ease now that she is in her own apartment, sitting on her considerably softer couch and she can now relax completely. Elliot had trudged zombie-like down her hallway after she had insisted that he must lie in her bed and not out in her front room so he can actually get as much sleep as possible, and he had assented expressionlessly. This had been about thirty minutes ago after arriving at her place, and he has not made any noise other than the sporadic fit of coughing.

She's decided that she should resist the temptation to check in on him and just descend into the cushions of her couch.

After switching on her TV and tuning into 48 Hours Hard Evidence, Olivia sinks into oblivion within the first few minutes of Maureen Maher's droning, throaty introductory monologue.

A panicky feeling swirls around her, encasing her lungs so that they contract but do not take in air and her heart fills with dread. The darkness behind her eyelids terrifies her and she moans softly before she pushes up from the pillow underneath her, taking deep, anxious breaths. She feels slightly more rested, but the sky outside her windows is now cobalt dark, and the watch on her wrist says that it is 5:13 in the evening.

Her stomach reminds her that she has had eaten the same amount of food as a bird lately, and it growls audibly. She remembers that while her cabinets are pitifully bare, she had stashed a week's worth of frozen dinners in her freezer, and all of a sudden the only thing she can think of is a hot plate of turkey and mashed potatoes and her feet kicked up on her coffee table as she watches TV.

She swings herself upright and to her feet, then treads down her hallway to her room, eager to peep in on her partner. She'd really rather have someone to hang out with, especially since she is not alone.

Elliot is snoring spread-eagle in her bed, bundled in his sweatshirt and pants, looking dead to the world but very relaxed. She feels brave enough to rattle his shoulder, because she counters the desire for his restful sleep with genuine worry and need for companionship. He coughs heavily, grimacing and palming his chest. It sounds rattling but tight, like all of the effort of coughing is having very little effect on improving the condition of his lungs.

"Elliot?" she asks and sits on the edge of her bed next to him.

His voice breaks from all of the abuse it has taken in the past couple of days. "Hm?"

"You okay?"

An eyelid cracks apart to reveal the intense blue of one iris. "Pretty much the same," he mumbles in that same muted tone, which makes him sound quite miserable. "I think I might just hack up a lung by the end of the day." He rubs the back of his hand over his forehead.

She smiles understandingly. "Are the blisters still driving you crazy?"

He pushes himself into a sitting position, then shoots her a look. "Well, two days into this hell is probably not enough time to heal up from the chicken pox." She raises her eyebrows at his snappy remark. "Actually, the coughing is a great distractor."

"You need anything?" Olivia asks, the concerned frown returning to her features. "Water? Something to chew on?"

Elliot stares at his feet in a sleepy daze. He appears to consider the idea of food and nods a little. Her insides triumph that he is finally eating something, and she rises away from the bed.

"Coming with me?" she prods, motioning at him with one of her hands.

He sighs, then forces himself away from the comforts of her pillow-top bed and follows her to her front room. She brings him a glass and a small plate of food that she has nuked in the microwave and eaten half of. She sits down carefully into her lush couch, palming her eyes that have blue-stained shadows underneath them. They certainly are a pair, aren't they? Battered and weather-worn.

"Well, I had a productive day," he says, deadpan. She chuckles softly and he chances a peak at her face. "You look like hell."

She scowls, but it never takes shape and turns into a wry grin. "You don't look so hot yourself."

"I have an excuse," he smirks, jabbing his pointer finger at his face. "I have permission to look like shit when I'm covered in exploding blisters."

"Uh, gross."

Olivia can snap back with a laundry list of glib remarks, but she just smiles at the dark TV in front of them. He trains his face from a pleased smirk to the stony façade she is familiar with and she knows he is planning on treading into a sensitive topic.

"Thanks, Liv."

"For what?" she wonders, deliberately acting oblivious.

He coughs heavily, pushing a fist into his right shoulder, then shrugs. "For taking care of me. I appreciate everything you've done."

"You'd do the same for me, right?"

He nods, shoveling food in his mouth. "Yeah. But only as long as you aren't contagious." When she punches his arm, he chuckles. "I'm kidding! Of course I would. You're my partner."

Olivia snags the remote and turns on the screen before them, finally immersing the dark room with the unnaturally cool hue of the TV. Elliot manages to force down a few bites, then settles into the pillows next to her. Olivia brings her attention to the television, but she can feel his eyes on her. She knows he is watching her and she can only imagine what is going through his mind at the time. She shifts slightly and he makes a fast decision to cover up his introspective studying by gulping down the rest of his water. This is going to turn into a long night if he keeps that up. Her flesh feels like it has suddenly been scalded in hot water and she vaguely realizes that her shirt is revealing a little more cleavage than usual. She almost snorts humorously. So Elliot is sneaking a peek? The idea causes her insides to bubble up in laughter, but she forces it down by biting her bottom lip as hard as she can until it subsides.

Olivia isn't sure just yet how she feels about her partner of a decade looking at her in such a manner, since at work their minds are constantly filled with the darkest of sexual deviancy. She decides after a few minutes of his peripheral glances in her direction and the warmth of their nearness making her feel content and fuzzy that she rather enjoys the idea of him looking at her in a different light, even if he had been there under normal circumstances, it would be so wrong. A tandem of reasonable thoughts race through her head, like what about Kathy? and what about his kids? She has to catch herself, because she realizes that they aren't doing anything considered "wrong" per se, just getting cozy- which is something they have failed to do for a long time. They have allowed their friendship to get so entangled in their professional life that it has nearly destroyed them. Elliot could have died and Olivia could have ended up partnering with someone else on a permanent basis after the Victor Gitano case, but had been these factors that drove her to move to another department. Of course, it hadn't lasted very long. She'd missed the unit, she'd missed the complicated cases, and most of all, she had missed him.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when he relaxes a bit more into her couch and drapes his arm over the top of the cushions, strategically placed around her. She snickers as she thinks back to her high school years and the boys she had dated who would do the same thing in order to move the night along a little faster. Elliot turns, his eyes slightly shiny from the long day of fever and coughing. Or is it something else? Olivia is too nervous to tell.

"What?" he asks, trying to appear innocent, but his grin gives it away. "What's so funny?"

Olivia hiccups unexpectedly and she puts her hand against her mouth, probably appearing playfully coy. She hadn't meant to look like that, but the expression on his face is priceless. "Nothing," she says, her head feeling a bit loopy. She can't help but feel deliciously warm, her thigh is tingling where his leg is touching and the back of her neck anticipates the sensation of his flesh meeting hers. Sure enough, he brushes his fingers against her shoulder, but instead of leaping up like her logic is telling her to, she sinks into the crook of his arm. Olivia knows she is probably staring, but she suddenly realizes that her partner is especially good looking in the dim light—even covered in chicken pox—and it'd been far too long since she'd even had the pleasure of a man's intimate embrace.

She wants to kick herself for thinking about sex, because this is Elliot. It is just a place she never allows herself to go. She feels a familiar sensation wash over her, that same flighty jumpiness—the same one that draws men in and paradoxically pushes them away. She hops up, pulling the hem of her shirt down nervously, then steps over his feet and moves toward her hallway.

"I'm going to take a shower. I'll be out in a few minutes, okay?" she says softly, thinking that he looks almost like a whipped puppy, but mostly just confused.

"Okay."


	5. Chapter 5

When Olivia exits the shower, she is mentally prepared for one of two things—an emotional ambush from her partner who is famous for his sometimes volatile temper and barely-contained rage, or the complete opposite of that, which is the cold shoulder and the figurative rough shove out of his personal business. Olivia had spent a good ten to fifteen minutes with the hot water beating down on her shoulders asking herself why she had dodged his attempt at getting cozy with her. She doesn't think that Elliot would come crashing through their judiciously constructed boundaries unless he had a damn good reason, so that really only leaves one logical conclusion—she doesn't trust herself in that kind of a situation. It is she that will succumb to these desires. She'd come up with the logistics of an apology after throwing on her bath robe and had opened the door, hoping that he'd still be there.

Olivia's heart sinks at the dark, empty front room. He's probably gone home. She moves out of the hallway and lets her eyes sweep the space before her, noting that the TV is off and that he'd been kind enough to clean up after himself, indicated by the missing plastic plate of unfinished turkey dinner and the pillows of her couch reassembled into a somewhat tidy manner.

She sighs dejectedly, tucking the terry cloth robe further around herself and treads softly down the hall toward her bedroom. She stops abruptly at the human-shaped lump under her comforter, not entirely shocked to find him still lingering around. She bites back a grin and mentally scolds the leaps her stomach makes at the sight of him. She swipes a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from her closet and hurries out of the room to dress in privacy, then returns and sits next to Elliot's prone figure. He almost immediately awakens, and she thinks quietly that he had been lying awake the entire time waiting for her to finish.

Olivia bristles in spite of herself, waiting for the inevitable annoyance, but she feels the sensation melt away when he scrubs at his neck and flashes her a pained smile.

"You're looking a little grizzly there, partner."

He huffs a silent laugh and the action sets off a fit of coughing. Elliot pushes a fist into his sternum, growling in frustration. "Kick me when I'm down, why don't you?"

The corner of her mouth lifts. "I'm sorry."

He glances up at her after rubbing his arms to pacify the itchiness of the blisters. "For what?" Something tells her that he is fishing for a thorough apology, which is why he is asking and she finds this slightly maddening but in standard Elliot Stabler fashion.

Olivia shoots him a look. "For bolting on you like that, I guess. I don't know," she shrugs, all of sudden jittery. "I suppose it's been too long since we just hung out with each other. For some reason now it just feels like things are different."

He collapses back onto her pillows, stretching like a lazy cat. "All is forgiven. But if something is bothering you, Liv, just tell me. Don't make it all weird and into a thing. Because when that happens, it really just gets messy and confusing when it doesn't need to be."

She gawks at him with a mysterious look on her face, like he has bewildered her yet again. He frowns in confusion.

"What?" he asks.

"You should have gotten the chicken pox a long time ago. The fever seems to calm down all of that pent up rage. When you get sick, apparently you are easier to get along with."

"I'm hard to get along with?"

She shrugs. "Elliot, you aren't entirely willing to talk to me when it comes to your personal life, while mine is an open book. We used to be really close like partners should be, but then we broke and haven't really recovered from it."

Elliot's dopey expression slips into something more serious. The topic has set off the tripwires in his head and she can tell just by looking at him that he's planning on clamming up. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember when you used to talk for hours about how proud you were of your kids? Or about staying in Jersey during the summer with your mom, or being a marine? And I'd talk about my bad dates or crazy things I did when I was a rookie." Olivia remains at his side, even when he pushes himself into a sitting position. "Why don't we do that anymore?"

He shakes his head solemnly. "I don't know, Liv."

"It's because I left you for Computer Crimes after the thing with Gitano."

Elliot grimaces. "Do we really need to dig up that grave right now? It's in the past, Olivia. Why don't we just keep it there?"

"My point is we haven't been the same to each other since then."

"I thought we were doing fine. I've been hanging out with only you for the past few days-I even blew off my own wife to stay at your place. What more do you want?"

Olivia knows him well enough that when he feels emotionally trapped that he tends to lash out meanly to escape. She would really love to throttle him for being so dense, but she resists the urge. "I just want our friendship to be back the way it was."

He sighs, digs his fingers into his temples, then glances at her chin. "I don't know, Liv. I…I worry that every time something happens, you'll get up and leave like you did going to CCU, and the other time you ran off with the Feds and didn't let me know." She begins to argue, but he stops her. "I know you had your reasons, but it still sucked. We're supposed to be friends."

She bites her lip to hide a small grin. "We are friends. And I'm sorry for leaving."

"You don't need to apologize. I know I can be an asshole, so I'm sure you had plenty of reasons."

"It wasn't because of you, El." He finally meets her eyes. "But you can be an asshole." His lips widen and she feels relieved. Situation defused.

He looks around the dark room for the first time. "What time is it?"

"About 6:00 in the evening, I'm guessing."

"That's it?" he groans and climbs out of her bed with painful sluggishness.

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Another night propped up on her couch, and Olivia is beginning to feel a slight case of cabin fever. She and Elliot had moved residence to the front room and they had both sat before the television and watched the last half of Goodfellas while she sipped at some tea. She'd insisted that he drink some even though he hated it, because she'd said that the hot tea with the honey would soothe his throat.

He'd popped another of his antivirals with a pain reducing chaser, and settled in next to her.

Before long, his head hits the back of the couch and he is out again, which she finds a bit disquieting when she considers that he's done almost nothing more than sleep all day. She reaches out with a concerned hand and touches his cheek with her fingers and watches his face contort. He is warm again, nothing horrible, but the achy expression sets off the worry inside of her.

"Elliot?" she asks gently. "You want to go back to my room?" She lightly shakes him.

"Hm?" he responds without opening his eyes.

"You want to crash on my bed instead of my couch?"

He scrapes at the skin underneath his shirt and Olivia decides this action is safe enough because it's through layers of clothing. He drifts off almost instantly afterward.

"Elliot."

"What?" he grumbles.

"Come on, let's get up."

She shoves at his knee and he finally greets her with the sourpuss face of a man rudely awakened. Olivia drags him up and guides him down the hall yet again, then deposits him onto the messy bed that she has not had the luxury of enjoying for a few days now.

He relaxes into her sheets and motions at her to join him. She can't help herself from succumbing, and she moves around to the other side and lies down. Elliot shoves any existing caution out the window and places a hand onto the dip of her waist.

Olivia has decided that she really likes this sick Elliot.

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She is sleeping, but she cannot recall closing her eyes. That is happening more often than she is comfortable with. Olivia stares at her wall and notices that she is on the wrong side of the bed, and the hand draped against her abdomen is probably the culprit. Elliot is sleeping next to her. She pushes up and glances at her clock. Too early.

She wonders what on earth woke her up at 12:20 in the morning. Then she wonders how she will manage to get back on a good sleeping pattern after all of this wake-sleep-wake bullshit.

A violent chill from the man must be the reason. She realizes that he is uncovered and she mentally panics, then grabs her blanket and throws it over him until she sees that he looks a little off.

Olivia peers at his face, then frowns. His lips have a blue tint to them, almost like he is losing oxygen or frigidly cold. Or dead. Her heart nearly stops at the sight. She gets on her hands and knees and puts her hands onto his shoulders, forcing him to lie flat on her bed. "Elliot!" She leans down and listens for any breathing and hears the shallow movement of air. She lets her forehead fall to his chest. Thank God. His body is letting of heat like a furnace. "Elliot?"

"Liv?" he asks shakily. His eyes are red, bloodshot and he looks disoriented. "What're you doing?" He coughs briefly, and she sits up like she's been speared by a cattle prod.

"You're burning up and your lips are blue, El. It freaked me out." She stares worriedly down at him. "Are you sure you shouldn't see a doctor?"

"No, no, it's okay. I just need to sleep," he mutters, his words coming out somewhat frazzled. He sits up and squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing them fiercely, then palms his forehead, grimacing.

"What's wrong?" she asks, concern building inside of her chest.

"Nothing," he grumbles.

"You took an Advil not that long ago, right?"

He nods sleepily. Olivia gets up and moves to the bathroom where she knows is much better stocked than her partner's, and fishes through her cabinet, this time in search of a thermometer that she knows is somewhere in the back. She finds a digital one that she'd bought about five years ago when she'd gotten a nasty cold. She's not even sure if the battery still works, but she figures it will have to do for now. She sits back down on the side of the bed he is inhabiting and puts the device in front of his nose. "Put this in your mouth." He does as he is told after she pushes the start button. It takes about sixty seconds for it to measure an accurate temperature, then beeps when it is done. She takes the thermometer out of his mouth and studies it. "Jesus Christ, El. You're fever is at 103.4." He nods again, appearing uninterested. "You're a dad, help me out here. Isn't that bad?"

"I think so," he answers, then grips the right side of his chest.

"Your chest hurts?"

He looks at her apprehensively, expecting an alarmed outburst. "A little." He hadn't complained of an ache in his chest, but she'd been watching him since she'd picked him up yesterday and he'd been doing a lot of pushing and poking at his shoulder. She knew he'd never say anything to her, maybe because of pride but probably mostly because he didn't want to scare her.

Olivia's mind searches frantically for ideas as to why his lips would be blue and his chest would hurt, especially after beginning the Acyclovir regimen and she finally comes up with an answer. "You need to see a doctor, Elliot. It sounds like the antiviral isn't working." He lies back down, settling underneath the comforter, unwilling to move.

"I'm too tired to move."

"I know, El, but your fever is only going to get worse if we don't do anything about it. And what if you aren't getting enough oxygen or the pneumonia is getting out of control? Pneumonia can kill people." Elliot rolls onto his back and appears lucid.

"I'm going to be fine, Liv. Grab me some Advil and give it time to kick in." Even though Olivia's insides are screaming to get him to a doctor, she stands up and refrains from bashing him upside the head. She looks down at his sleepy face for a few seconds before finally walking back to the bathroom.

Forty-five minutes later she moves over to his side again and inspects his forehead with the back of her hand, then sits on the bed and presses her lips gently on his brow. He is still warm, but not quite as bad as before. He never budges and she quietly snickers at his hanging mouth and loud snore. She decides maybe he is right, and crawls carefully to the other side of him, punches a pillow and shoves one in between her knees. She is asleep within minutes.

Olivia awakens in a fright. Her shoulders feel tight and her neck aches. The room is pitch black, but she knows instantly what it is that has disturbed her. Elliot. "El? Are you okay?" He is semi-awake, tossing fitfully. The sight is alarming, so she reaches out and touches him. He feels much worse now. The clock next to him reads 4:39 in the morning and she realizes the Advil has probably started to wear off by then. "Elliot." He turns to face her in his troubled sleep, curling slightly and pushing his hands into the pillow his head rests on. "Elliot," she says with more force. He starts, and even in the dark she can see the confusion in his features. "I need to take your temperature. Can you sit up a little bit?"

"What?" he rasps, and lets an arm fall over his eyes. "Olivia, what are you doing?"

She pops the thing in his mouth and presses the button. It takes much longer to determine his temperature this time. He trembles and shakes as though he is in the middle of an ice storm, and gooseflesh rises on his exposed skin until visible even in the dim light. She peers at the thermometer, straining her eyes to read the glowing device, then flicks on her bedroom light

"Oh, God." 104.8. This is getting ridiculous. She glances over at him and feels despair at the blue-tinged lips. "Elliot, you're fever is getting really bad. We need to get you to the emergency room." It is when he doesn't argue when she begins to sincerely worry.


	6. Chapter 6

Strolling back through the sliding doors from the parking garage sets off that resigned feeling in Olivia's gut, especially when the rush of sterile, ventilated air hits her face and flutters her hair and the too bright illumination of the fluorescent lights momentarily blinds her. She sighs wearily.

She is tired to her bones. Cragen will take one scathing look at her and berate her for not doing anything he had advised and returning to work no better than before.

The emergency room isn't a circus for once. Olivia guesses not too many people enjoy the ER at this hour. She sure doesn't. Elliot seems to be on another planet as he takes a seat in one of the all too familiar hardback chairs, his face pasty white save for the pinched redness of his cheekbones. At the registration counter, a kinder desk person looks up, immediately noticing the haggard determination. "I'm going to need help over here," Olivia states, motioning somewhere behind her in Elliot's general vicinity.

"What can I do for you tonight, ma'am?"

Olivia shakes her head in impatience. "No, not me. My partner is very ill. He has a horrible fever and chest pain."

The woman's eyes sharpen at the mention. "Is he experiencing shortness of breath or any shooting pains down his left arm?"

"It's not a heart attack," she retorts crossly. "He was just diagnosed with varicella pneumonia and his chest hurts when he coughs. His fever is through the roof and his lips are blue. The doctor who saw him recently said to come back to the ER if the symptoms get worse."

The woman nods, then hands her a clipboard and pencil. "Fill this out and we'll get him in to see a triage nurse as quickly as we can." She grabs something from her desk and hands Olivia a sanitary respiratory mask. "He'll need to put this on."

The detective takes the mask thinking that Elliot will probably whine the entire time about wearing it like he did last time.

Surprisingly, he stays silent.

The form is basic, so it takes a minimal amount of time to answer the questions. Amazingly, a different nurse from their last visit calls Elliot to the same small room after a few minutes. A man clad in dark blue scrubs appears with a wheelchair and Elliot docilely takes a seat, not even caring that he is on display. Normally he would completely refuse such treatment.

The nurse inside her little triage room does the standard testing, first his pulse oxygen saturation level. The number flickers back and forth between 94 and 95, letting out a piercing bleep when it hits the lower number. Olivia thinks that whenever the noise erupts in the room, it mimics the dread penetrating her middle. Next comes his blood pressure, which is still a tad high-142/82, but it doesn't seem to be anything alarming to the nurse, so Olivia squashes her worry.

She knows the woman will be taken aback by his temperature, and is correct in her summation when the thermometer shows it to be well over 104 degrees. Well, at least my own thermometer is working, Olivia thinks humorlessly.

"Are you having trouble breathing, Mr. Stabler?"

"Detective," Olivia responds automatically. The nurse only gives her a brief acknowledging glance.

"Detective Stabler?"

Elliot is pinching the bridge of his nose. "Hm?"

"Elliot?" the nurse asks, leaning toward his face. "When was the last time you took anything for your fever?"

"I dunno," he shrugs, letting his arms fall to his lap and gazing at the walls around him, loopy and delirious.

Olivia decides she'll answer for him. "He took some Advil and an Acyclovir a few hours ago."

"First thing's first—we need to get that temperature down to a more manageable level. And we'll need to keep a close eye on his breathing with the pulse oximeter, so we'll bring him back right now."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He's freezing and his back and knees hurt. Moving them seems to help a little, but he's in a confined area so he cannot pace, which is what he'd like to do. However, getting up from his spot sounds enormously uncomfortable and inconvenient since his body feels like a large stump and sleep pulls at him. He settles for shoving his folded hands in between his legs, and feels a forceful chill race through him. The room is too freaking cold.

He can hear voices around him with concerned, hushed tones, but he isn't listening to what they are saying. Probably not the best thing to do when he is a cop and being observant is all part of the job. Through the gentle noises, he hears the occasional mechanical shriek, metallic clinking, doors opening and closing.

Elliot can feel a soft hand against his temple and just the simple touch is comforting. Nothing makes much sense to his fevered brain, so he lets himself fade out again. His mind is in a strange juxtaposition between lucidity and delirium, his body tense and cold, but tired.

He can feel a sharp prick in his left arm and although he'd wrench away, he has no strength. The spark of pain is gone quickly, and after a few moments of quiet listening, he feels himself drifting.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He opens his eyes and notices Olivia's frowning face in a chair next to him. Suddenly the voices and sounds begin to seem logical and he realizes he is lying on a hospital bed in a curtained-off area of the ER (he's seen these rooms from this vantage point more times than he can remember), and the beeping noises are from the equipment surrounding him. His left hand has an IV taped to it, and his gaze follows the tube to the bag hanging above him, then to the electrodes taped to his torso which is lightly covered by the illustrious spotted hospital gown. He wonders if this time they did indeed take his pants.

He does not recall winding up in this room, which is unnerving for a man with such a cautious and vigilant nature.

"Elliot?" Olivia asks softly. "You coming around?"

"Is he awake?" A nurse moves close to him, blocking his view of his partner and reveals a thermometer. "Let's go ahead and see if the fever reducer is still working." It takes a few moments, but the reading seems to please the nurse. "101.5. Good. Looks like it's doing its job. I'm going to send for the doctor." She reaches for a call button and asks the nurses' station for the resident night doctor.

"Hey," he says. His body is itchy and sore, probably from exhaustion of the illness and the restless nights of interrupted sleep.

Olivia leans closer to him. "How are you feeling, El?"

"Like roast beef."

She wrinkles her nose at that. "You sure you're still not delirious?"

"Figure of speech, Liv."

"Good, because you kind of freaked me out for a while there."

Elliot's eyebrows dip into a grimace. "Why? Was I that bad?"

She doesn't say anything, just crosses her arms.

"What time is it?" he yawns, noticing that the stab of pain that he'd gotten used to has eased and he can finally take a deeper, more substantial breath. The responding cough is not as tight either, much more satisfying.

Olivia brushes her bangs away from her forehead and then checks her watch. "Almost 7:00."

Elliot glances at the clip on his finger. "I can't remember anything after seeing the triage nurse."

She shrugs. "I don't know why you would, El. Your fever spiked at almost 105 degrees and you were delirious for an hour before they gave you something to help you sleep."

"It doesn't hurt so much to breathe." He palms his chest for good measure.

She smiles grimly. "The doctor thought that the lining of your lungs was swollen and that's why you weren't breathing so well, so they gave you some kind of medicine for your lungs. You kept trying to rip the mask off your face, so that's when they decided to knock you out."

Something in his fuzzy memory remembers the hissing of the device, the cool mist in his face, and the itchiness of his nose and needing to scratch it incessantly.

The door opens and a harried man in glasses, scrubs, and a disheveled lab coat breezes in, medical chart in hand. He peers over the lenses at the man in the bed and acknowledges him with a nod of his head. "Detective Stabler, so good to see you awake. You gave us a reason to worry for a moment there."

Olivia moves away from the side of the bed so that the doctor has better access.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you don't remember our introduction, so I'll introduce myself again. I'm Dr. Hagee," the man says kindly, shaking Elliot's hand.

"You're right, I don't really remember anything past arriving."

"Well," Dr. Hagee says, straightening his collar. "That's from the fever. We did another chest x-ray and saw that the lining of your lungs swelled, making it difficult for you to get a really decent amount of oxygen, so we went ahead and administered a bronchodilator called albuterol to open your airway up and make it easier to take a more sufficient breath."

"What's that?"

"It's a kind of medicine commonly used by people with asthma. Typically, we don't administer this kind of breathing treatment to a pneumonia patient unless he or she is having difficulty taking in oxygen—as in your case. We've seen your pulse ox and respiratory rate climb to healthy numbers, so it definitely helped."

"It feels like it did," Elliot says, touching his collar.

The doctor listens to his chest, then has him sit up to press his stethoscope on his back. "It sounds much looser in there. Definitely got some clatter, but we want you to have that productive coughing, so it's a good noise." He uses a penlight to peer into the man's eyes, ears, and throat, and then studies some of the figures off of the readout of the electrocardiogram and blood pressure gauge. "Well, so far so good. I'm going to step out and continue my rounds, but I like what I see. You might just be out of here later on today."

And just as quickly as he had arrived, the man leaves briskly.

Elliot notices that the same nurse from before is still shuffling around the room. "Hey, can you go grab him and ask if I can leave now?"

The woman glances up from her duties. "I think Dr. Hagee wanted to see your temperature dip below 100 degrees to release you, but I can let him know you want to take off early. He sounded pretty pleased with the results."

"Good, because my partner here needs to sleep." Elliot's eyes train on the dark circles of Olivia's face. "And she won't let herself if I'm in a hospital bed."

The nurse leaves and soon they are alone again. Olivia sighs tiredly. "Cragen wants me to be at my best because of yesterday. I'll have to be there at 8:00 or he'll be on me the minute I walk in the door."

"Take a personal day, Liv. How are you going to be able to concentrate when you are this exhausted?" He scratches at his arm and receives a withering look. He removes his fingers and returns them to his side.

"Are you kidding? With an active case and down a man? I'm surprised he even sent me home at all yesterday, especially with the vic still laid up in the hospital."

Elliot knows she is drained and losing patience. Heck, anyone would be after all of the running around she's been doing. "You don't have to sit here with me, Liv. You can try to get some sleep at home."

She glares at him. "Elliot, you know I would never dump you off at the hospital and leave you without any support."

"I know."

The nurse returns with a cheery expression. "Good news, Detective."

"What?" he asks warily.

"Dr. Hagee said it was a good thing you came in to control the fever and letting the lining of your lungs swell anymore may have resulted in something much more serious, so definitely thank your partner over there for her quick thinking."

Olivia grins triumphantly and Elliot can't help but respond in kind but not before rolling his eyes.

The nurse continues. "He said he's going to go ahead and release you, but he would like for you to have one more breathing treatment before you head out."

"Oh, good." Elliot shares a relieved look with his partner. "How long will that take?"

The nurse reaches for a tube and sets up the device that will apparently open his airways even more than they are already. "I'd say about—fifteen minutes."

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Olivia is in the crib, thin pillow thrown over her head. She is too tired to get up, but too wired to sleep. She has been lying in there for a good ten minutes of welcomed silence, something that is incredibly rare for this particular precinct, but she cannot for the life of her make herself turn off.

Elliot had finally been released shortly after 7:30 with the strong advice of Dr. Hagee to take all of his prescribed medication—which now included a stylish inhaler. Elliot had stared at the thing in horror after retrieving it from the nurse, and Olivia couldn't help herself from chuckling at him.

After she had dumped him off at her place, she had immediately turned and headed straight to work, figuring that Cragen wouldn't mind a mild case of tardiness if he thought she had a good enough reason. Taking her partner to the hospital certainly served as a valid cause for being late, but it sure had created some questions she hadn't been sure she'd wanted to answer.

The captain had taken one look at her and escorted her into his office, first thoroughly reprimanding her for once again ignoring his instruction and going straight over to take care of her sick partner, then asking her if Elliot was okay and giving her that police-minded, analytical look—the one that showed how aware he was of the how the internal mechanisms of her mind were working—and last telling her to get some rest now, that they would wake her if they needed her. She had nodded mutedly and instantly did as he told, feeling like a complete jackass. Right now she wanted to strangle Elliot for what he was inadvertently doing to her life at work.

Just as she is finally settling into the lumpy cot, the door bursts open and Fin's looming presence is both heard and felt. "What?" she says gruffly from underneath the pillow.

"A witness just called in with Wilson's description near the library off of 42nd. We're following up, hoping to get some action. It's been pretty quiet today." Olivia pushes herself up slowly, feeling lightheaded and almost as delirious as her errant partner. "You goin' with?"

"Yeah, give me a sec'."

Fin lumbers away and she moves over to the bathrooms where she stares in the mirror at her face, thinking in revulsion how utterly exhausted she is. Her eyes are swollen and her cheeks look hollow. Her hair is pulled back into a lazy ponytail and she is still clothed in her yoga pants and a sweatshirt. She splashes water on her face and changes into something a little more reasonable from her locker, then jogs down the steps to the precinct floor to get the blood flowing.

The guys are all gathered, waiting for her at the desks. "You ready, Sleeping Beauty?" Munch asks, smiling sarcastically.

"Yep, let's go."

Olivia prays silently to herself that this will be an easy and quick bust, and that Dirk Wilson will just submit to being apprehended. The last thing she needs in her state is a dumb ass perp resisting arrest. Please, nothing involving running or tackling. Or anything with guns or knives. Or bleeding in general.


	7. Chapter 7

She rides with Cragen in the passenger seat, and the drive that should take a few minutes down 42nd Avenue winds up taking closer to thirty because some yahoo had decided to wedge the front end of his car into a nearby light pole. There are police cruisers and ambulances littered everywhere and the crossroads at 3rd and 42nd are completely sealed off. Olivia stares at the people milling about the scene of the accident, thinking that there must have been some kind of fatality since the morbid fascination on the bystander's faces is clear even from her location in the car. She thinks bitingly that the public never ceases to amaze her by how sick they can be. If there's a corpse on the ground, guaranteed a crowd will already have it cordoned off with the press of their own bodies. No need for police tape.

Her head droops with the rocking movement of the vehicle and she catches herself mid-nod, shaking herself abruptly to jostle the sleepiness from behind her eyes. Cragen is at a stop again. She glances out the windshield and notices that Fin and Munch's slate colored sedan is no longer in front of them. "We're not going to make it," she mumbles, fingers pushed into the skin of her neck. Her pinky brushes over the nearly indiscernible uneven line where just a year ago was stitched shut.

"There really isn't even a guarantee that Wilson is even at the library, and if so, he could very well have already left the building."

Olivia's eyes burn with the need to close them. "It's worth a shot." She rubs her forehead as he studies her movements.

Cragen narrows his gaze before him despite the somber gray overcast completely enshrouding the January sun. He turns up the volume of their patrol radio and reaches for the receiver. "Fin, Munch, you making any progress through this mess?"

A brief burst of static erupts before they hear a response. "We turned down 41st to move around it, Cap, but it's backed up pretty bad every which way," Fin states in his gruff baritone.

"Did we ever verify the witness statement? Do we know if Wilson is still in the area?"

"The caller is still on the line with 9-1-1. She said that he went inside about ten minutes ago went somewhere in the back and hasn't been seen at the exit."

Olivia unbuckles her seat belt and surges out of the passenger side door.

"Olivia, where the hell do you think are you going?" Cragen barks, leaning over the seats. "I don't want you heading out by yourself."

"It's quicker this way, Captain," she says doggedly, glowering at him and waiting for him to challenge her. Olivia seriously thinks that she has been partners with Elliot for such a long time that they are beginning to rub off on each other more than just personality traits, but stony glares and impenitent rage as well. "We can either wait in this car, or we can walk the rest of the four blocks and get there now. Wilson may attempt to flee if he sees all of these squad cars arriving. If we show up on foot, we have a better chance at getting him with the shock factor. And at least we'll have the benefit of already being on foot if he does."

She bolts off like a flash of lightning, dodging around honking cars and pedestrians, and the captain has no choice but to trail after her. He scrambles out of the driver's seat and slams the door behind him, hoping that he hasn't left anything valuable behind that someone may decide to take. He follows her lead through the traffic and tries to keep pace with the racing detective, finding it difficult since she is clearly in better shape than he is. Been riding the desk too long.

Cragen feels as though he is jogging out of breath for an hour and the sidewalks seem like they grow an additional ten feet with each step he takes. He sees Olivia's lithe figure dart across 5th toward the library where crowds of spectators watch in curiosity at the two. The faces blur together past him and Cragen scarcely misses being tagged by a truck as he attempts to cross.

By the time he rounds past the stately lion statues and up the steps to the entrance of the popular library, she is completely out of sight. Cragen can't remember if Olivia had taken her radio with her or not, and he curses lividly.

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She's out of air when she reaches the front entrance and she stops at the desk, momentarily taking a breather. The receptionist is only mildly shocked by the detective's hasty arrival. "My name—is Detective Benson. We had a call about a—dangerous suspect on the premises."

The woman gawks for a few seconds, then nods her head. "Yeah, he was seen near the second floor reading rooms by one of our librarian assistants."

Olivia smashes her fist into her side to ward off the ache from running so heavily. "How long ago?"

"This was probably about twenty-five minutes ago."

"Did you see this man leave at any time?"

The receptionist looks at her colleagues and they all wordlessly shake their heads. "No, not that I'm aware of, but there is another exit in construction at the 42nd street end. There's a lot of stuff going on during the remodel, but it is possible to leave the building from over there."

The exhaustion tugs at her but she shoves it away, and she chooses to ignore this statement. Her mind does not register that she should wait for some sort of assistance and that she should hang back for a moment to allow Cragen time to catch up. Instead, she gestures to the right. "The stairs are that way?"

The librarian uses her hand to show the direction she will need to go.

"Okay, I want everyone to leave the building. The suspect is a risk to the public's safety." Olivia decides this time to walk so she doesn't set off any suspicion. She thinks back to Wilson's smiling driver's license photo, remembering the fine details of his size and his physical features. Dark hair, glasses, brown eyes. Medium build. Roughly 180 pounds. She can't remember if he'd been reported with facial hair, mostly because she'd been so distracted by Elliot's misery that she'd missed that particular bit of information.

She unbuttons the holster at her hip, but does not remove her weapon, choosing instead to avoid alarming the patrons sitting calmly and unknowingly at their rows of tables. She touches the front of her dress slacks for her radio and feels her heart sink when she realizes that she'd forgotten the device in her rush to get to the building.

Olivia decides that she does not have enough time and shoves her way into the stairwell. She takes the steps two at a time until she surfaces at the second level. The rooms are to her immediate right and are quiet and comfortable. She picks up a magazine and studies the small crowd around her, not recognizing any of the people in the immediate area.

She continues down the walkway, past shelves of books and further toward a darker area that is shadowy and unused. Her eyes sharpen when she notices a man at the end of the hall near a door with a sign that says in bold letters Allen Room. He seems to survey her as shiftily, and Olivia's senses, although fried, are screaming at her. This is the prick, right in front of you, she thinks. She busies herself with the magazine she still clutches in her left hand, turning so that her gun is not visible. In the corner of her eye she sees him step out of the darkness and she promptly identifies him as Dirk Wilson.

Her hand flies to her hip and she wrenches out her Sig Sauer, fumbling briefly with the safety, then training it at the man. "Wilson, get on the ground!"

Naturally, the man darts off to the left down another hallway before she can utter another word. She grumbles irritably and gives chase, arms held shoulder high as she clenches the gun. Her hands that were once stiff and cold are now clammy with perspiration.

"Dammit!"

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Fin and Munch scramble into the library by crashing through the construction at the 42nd street exit, disrupting a couple of carpenters when they both knock down a sawhorse that had been precariously holding a drill saw and blueprints.

"Hey!" one of the workers shouts irritably, dropping his pencil and clenching his hands. Munch raises his eyebrows, flashing his badge at the man.

"Police," the detective says, distracted by the scene inside. "Out of the way, gentlemen."

Fin has his trademark snarl in place. "Back off. You don't want to be on my bad side today."

The man furiously holds up his arms in surrender. "You pricks just knocked over our plans and an expensive piece of equipment. Is the city of New York going to pay for a new one to replace this if it's broken?"

The detectives trot off, but not before Fin barks behind him. "Get fucked."

They meet up with their captain, who is breathing heavy at the front desk. "What's up, Captain?" Munch asks.

Cragen wags a finger toward the stairs off to the right. "Olivia just took off for the second floor. I need you to find her."

"You okay?" Fin queries, grabbing their superiors shoulder.

"I'll be fine. Go!"

The men speed over to the stairwell as Cragen opts to cross the other side and follow suit.

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Her legs burn from the exertion, her side aches, and her lungs feel as though they have withered like autumn leaves, but her adrenaline is spiking, so she channels it all to push herself to go faster. Wilson is only a few long strides ahead of her. She has an excellent chance of apprehending him and she can feel the recognizable sensation of excitement creep into her midsection. This is what people like her sign up for in the academy, adrenaline gluttons and indomitable adventure hounds alike. The thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of the catch.

She notices that the doors to another unused room have swung open with a rough shove and she stops, moves her Sig down at her hips with both hands, and then peers through the window in opposite directions, noting that she does not see anyone at the door and it appears safe to open.

Olivia enters cautiously, aiming the gun at whatever may be at her sides, but all she sees is what looks like a theater style conference room with columns of high backed gray chairs. She finds it off-putting that the central podium has the only light source and the room is eerily black, but she is distracted by the bright, Kelly green carpeting underneath her feet. As she slinks down the central aisle, she is struck with an unnerving déjà vu and she cannot quite place why this looks so familiar.

The gray colored seats stand up unnervingly like rows upon rows of lonely gravestones, and the carpet only adds to the creepiness as it mimics the hue of fresh cut grass.

The dream.

Dread washes over her and she suddenly forgets to breathe for just a moment.

A momentary slip-up is all it takes for the bastard to get the upper hand.

Something hits her from behind right at the small of her back and she is shoved forward onto her stomach, her right cheekbone connecting with the armrest of a nearby chair. Her gun skitters down the aisle, but she is unable to respond with the proper amount of responsive force because stars have blinded her vision and her brain is stunned into a stupor.

She pauses briefly and gasps at the strong burst of pain underneath her eye, that is until she feels man sized fingers begin digging into the flesh of her thighs and the oppressive weight of a heavily panting body that is mounted on top of her, straddling at her rear.

Olivia's instincts react by sending out violent kicks and thrashes, somehow managing to turn slightly onto her side, and a well-aimed fist connects with flesh and bone and is followed by a satisfying crack. Wilson fumbles slightly and he leans backward off of her, spitting out a 'fuck!', and easing the weight so that she can squirm out from under him. She peers ahead and in the darkness she can see her weapon lying about five feet away from her immediate reach.

Olivia surges forward from her hands and knees. Her senses are strained, so she hardly even registers the instantaneous swelling of her eye and the blood dripping past her chin.

"Where you going, bitch?" he rasps. Before her hands can close around her service piece, she feels a boot stomp the small of her back and he is on her again, this time angrily throwing punches at her head. The first hit to her head she reacts with a sharp cry, but the following punches are absorbed by the waning adrenaline still coursing through her body but seeping away quickly.

She uses all of her brute force to push him off of her, but the exhaustion from the past few days and the hard sprinting and the blows have weakened her immensely. Wilson's knuckle meets the backside of her skull and her vision goes gray. All she can sense at this point is the man grabbing a fistful of her hair and using the other hand to push up her shirt.

Her fingers claw at the green carpet, trying for her weapon even in her state, but they simply dig into the threads.

Wilson lets go of her hair and lets her head flop to the ground. The swollen cheekbone hits first and all she knows before she passes out is a flurry of noise, the scratchiness of the floor, and then nothing.

Olivia's body sinks into welcomed rest.


	8. Chapter 8

A single shot is all it will take. Munch's body is standing taut as a bowstring, the balls of his feet rooted into the harsh carpet below and his arms locked into the distinguishable posture of an overwrought cop in a lethal situation. He has the perfect view of the dark, tousled head of Wilson dead to rights, and he watches in horror when he sees the man in motion as if he is striking somebody under him forcefully, multiple times. The man's fingers grapple for something tucked in the back of his pants and the metal of it glints off of the light from the center stage.

A knife.

"Freeze!" the detective yells, satisfaction rising when Wilson startles at the noise, pausing before delivering the final knife plunging blow. "Drop your weapon!"

Fin joins him at his side, instantly reacting to his partner's intensely focused position by aiming his own gun in the suspect's direction. "Give it up, man. You're surrounded!"

Wilson remains frozen, his breaths coming in heavy, jagged heaves.

Munch growls under his breath. "I want to see both hands in the air right now!" He edges closer with enough of a view now to see that it is a female body pinned underneath the man—a very familiar body.

Unmoving.

Wilson turns and grins at the detectives with a stomach twisting smirk. "Hands up, right now!"

"Do it you sick fucker, unless you want me to empty this chamber into your skull!" Just as Fin barks his command, Wilson complies, the leer on his face widening maddeningly. His hands rise slowly above his head, just as the captain rounds the opposite doorway to the conference room.

"Now," Munch orders, his voice even, feet still inching forward, "drop the knife."

The switchblade is tossed to the side, and as soon as the physical threat is gone, all three men thrust forward, wrenching the rapist off of Olivia's limp form.

Fin whips his handcuffs out of his pocket and cinches the stainless steel bracelets around Wilson's wrists, making them acceptably tight enough to cause slight discomfort. He recites the Miranda rights, and then hauls the man to his feet by taking hold of his forearm and yanking upward.

Munch and Cragen immediately fall to Olivia's side, first checking her carotid for a pulse and listening for regular breath until their amateur findings reveal satisfactory results. Munch holds her neck steady in case she has suffered a spinal injury while the captain rolls her gently onto her back. The two men grimace at the blood streaming from her nose and a cut just beneath her right eye. The skin surrounding the wound is already blue and swollen.

"Call a bus," Cragen breathes as he scrapes away the strands of Olivia's hair that have caught on her face and are sticky with blood. Munch speaks into his radio as the captain leans closer to his detective. "Olivia, can you hear me? Open your eyes." All that emits from her mouth is a low whimper, a sound that incites a feeling of dread in his middle. He's seen a lot of things, but blood and carnage committed against his own team members never fails to hurt him to witness it. "Liv, it'll be okay. Help is coming."

Munch returns after communicating with a dispatcher. "Cap, medics are on their way."

"What's their ETA?"

"They said the nearest bus is about three blocks away, so I'd say give or take ten minutes." Munch pauses for a moment. "Do you think we should call Elliot?"

Cragen glances up at the man, then back to Olivia's unconscious form. "I don't know if that's a good idea, John."

"Personally, I'd want somebody to call me if my partner were hurt."

"Elliot is recovering from pneumonia and the chicken pox. I don't think he's even healthy enough to get out of bed."

"We should at least call him."

The captain knows that Olivia and Elliot are close. The pair has been partnered up for longer than anyone else in the precinct. Considering that the typical stint in the special victims unit is two years and partnership usually lasts about five or so, he supposes that Munch is correct in his reasoning. He's noticed a change in their friendship lately, ever since Olivia had returned from her run with the FBI. Elliot had handled it as best as he could, if one could imagine the way a bull handles fine China. But Cragen had known that the detective had been devastated so when she'd come back from the West Coast, the anger and hostility had clung to him. The tension was potent for a moment, but had begun to ease into something a little more palatable. Something that was becoming less like colleagues and more like what he'd seen one too many times on the force—something that co-dependent partners of the opposite sex tended to wind up doing regardless of the serious consequences. He sure as hell hopes that he is wrong.

Cragen sighs. "All right. Call him. I know it'll be damn near impossible, but encourage him to stay home."

Munch nods solemnly and moves to make the phone call.

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Inevitably the trio is split into different directions—Fin drags Wilson out of the eerily vacant library that Olivia had previously and effectively evacuated, throws the man into the backseat of his sedan and gets the go ahead to take the bastard down to central booking. The stony glares from the mélange of police officers in their stately patrol uniforms are truly a sight to behold, but Wilson seems unaffected by them. Fin nods his head at a few, and they share a congratulatory silent moment.

Cragen follows the paramedics, who all know the detectives quite well since they often run into and converse with one another frequently, and when her stretcher is folded and pushed into the waiting ambulance, he climbs aboard, but not before a young rookie officer hands him the items they'd left in their abandoned vehicle. "Thanks," he mutters, and then turns to Munch just before the medics reach for the door handle to slam it shut. "So, what's up John? Elliot in a mad panic yet?"

The thinner man shrugs. "Couldn't get ahold of him. I've tried his cell phone, but it keeps ringing straight to voicemail."

Something about that doesn't sit right with the captain's intuitive senses, but he does not have time to ruminate on it. "Did you call him at home?"

"Good thinking. I'll do that." Munch unlocks his phone by punching awkwardly at the screen.

One of the EMTs is watching the conversation impatiently. "I'm sorry, Captain Cragen. I hate to interrupt, but we really should get her over to the ER. Head injuries can be very complicated and seconds do matter in terms of brain swelling and full recovery."

Cragen and Munch move away from one another. "All right. Let's go, then."

Munch holds his hand up to stop the swinging motion of the door. "Hang on. Which hospital are you guys taking her to?"

"Bellevue will take the least amount of time," the driver calls from his seat.

"See you there," the detective says, and then steps back to watch the bus take off, lights and sirens in full distress mode.

A call is placed and surprisingly, the phone is picked up after one ring. The bored voice of a young and distracted teen answers. It sounds very much like the owner of the voice is Elliot's adolescent son, Dickie.

"Hello?"

"Hey there. This is Detective Munch from the precinct. Is your dad around?"

He can hear the boy frown in the change of his tone. "Uh, my dad doesn't live here anymore."

This strikes Munch as odd since no one at work had been aware of any change in the man's home life. Then again, Elliot does prefer to keep professional and personal matters completely separate based on the state of flux his marriage is always in and that Kathy had almost always been left in the dark when it came to the job. He only knows this because he'd been sitting at his desk when the woman came in looking for her husband during a witness sweep that he'd managed to avoid. She'd spoken with him for about twenty minutes about the kids, the house, her pursuit of a satisfying career, and finally how lonely she was since Elliot was always working. Munch had felt sympathetic for a moment, remembering the many relationships he'd had in the past that suffered the same neglect and anguish. His had never drawn out quite as long as the Stablers' had, however.

"Okay," the detective says uncertainly, feeling as though he has stumbled into something unpleasant. "Your mom there?"

"Yeah," Dickie says and then shouts not far enough away from the phone to his mother. "Mo-o-om! Phone!"

"Nice," Munch says drily, remembering why he has avoided populating the earth with his own spawn.

"Hello?" a light, melodic voice says after about half a minute.

"Hi Kathy, it's John Munch."

There is a notable pause. "Hey. What's going on?" The typical learned response of a seasoned police wife.

"I'm just trying to get ahold of Elliot. Something happened at work and it's important for me to inform him what is going on."

"What happened?"

He hesitates, but then reminds himself that Olivia and Elliot once had a rather harmonious rapport that involved the entire Stabler clan—Kathy included. She will probably be just as concerned for Olivia's health as any other friend.

"The perils of police work. Olivia was injured in the line of duty. Since Elliot's out sick, we figured he should be informed of the situation. I wasn't able to get in touch with him by cell phone."

Kathy hums when she thinks. "Well, last I saw him he was at his apartment."

"Can I get his address? I suppose I'll drop by and tell him in person."

Kathy rattles off the location of her estranged husband's apartment, and Munch takes off at a light jog toward his car.

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Munch is easily allowed into the building by the doorman, and he finds the fact that Elliot lives on the second floor even more pleasing, since elevators tend to make him nervous and he often chooses to take the stairs. His willowy legs and tired lungs thank his colleague for making such a smart decision. John trots up to the nondescript dark blue door and knocks quickly, then notices that the tip of his right shoe comes into contact with a couple rolled up newspapers.

He listens to the inside of the place carefully, but after a couple minutes of silence, he comes to the conclusion that the man is not home. And hasn't been for two days, judging by the small stack at his feet. He shakes his head. Of course he'd be given a simple task that would turn into a wild goose chase.

"Are you looking for Detective Stabler?"

The detective glances to his right, where a young woman is standing in front of her door as she fumbles for her keys. He nods. "As a matter of fact, I am."

"I think he's staying with his girlfriend."

This really throws him for a loop. "His girlfriend?"

She's oblivious to his bewilderment. "Well, I don't know if she is his girlfriend, but she showed up about a week before and stayed until a couple days ago. They seemed pretty close, so I assumed they're hooking up."

"All right," he says. "Thanks for the information."

Munch blows out a sigh. To Olivia's place he will go.

The doorperson is not as quick to let him in. He has to flash his badge at this one, and the man watches him warily the entire time he is in his presence. Her place is on an upper floor and he curses under his breath. He'll enter the steel box only if it seems necessary and there is no other reasonable way to get to his destination.

He pounds on her door, hoping that this is not a foolish venture and that he hasn't wasted an hour out of time that could be spent in Bellevue seeing how Olivia is doing instead of chasing down her wayward partner. This time he hears the faint sounds of a TV, and is almost entirely certain that someone, Elliot, is inside. But very likely sleeping soundly.

In the end, he has the building super open the door for him after three rounds of noisy knuckle-tapping. Munch strolls in and notices that the TV is playing to itself in an increasingly darkening room. He wanders through feeling as though he is intruding on Olivia's private life. Evidence of her is everywhere, and he momentarily admires her furniture, framed pictures, even the brief waft of scented candles collecting dust on her end table.

He walks down her shadowed hallway and pauses at her door, eying her bed where a form lies underneath a heavy coverlet. Munch feels relief flood through him, and then he reaches toward her wall and fumbles for the light switch.

"Elliot?" he says, stepping into the room. The man pushes the blanket aside as he sits up, confusion marking his features.

"Jesus. Is that you, Munch?" Elliot asks, puzzled, rubbing at his face which is indeed covered in spots.

"Now Elliot, chicken pox rule number one is the most important—pay attention, there will be a test later. No scratching."

Elliot remains in a recently-wakened stupor, Munch's humor sailing a foot over his head. A few heartbeats skid by before he formulates an intelligible answer. "How did…what…why are you here?" He scrapes at the floor for the hoodie he had discarded before falling to sleep and throws it on. "Where's Olivia?" An alarmed expression dissolves away the disorientation. Munch supposes that something must have clicked in his brain to recognize the absurdity of his presence in Olivia's apartment. "Did something happen?"

"Sorry to have to tell you this, Elliot. We need to hustle down to Bellevue right now."

"For God's sake, John, what's going on?" the younger man demands, rising to his feet and hurriedly shoving on his running shoes.

"Olivia was in pursuit of Wilson and he caught her off guard. We're still trying to work out the details, but she sustained a possible traumatic head injury."

Elliot presses his fingers into his temples, then slams a fist against the closest object, which is a small vanity. "Fuck!" He rights himself by rolling his shoulders back. "What're we waiting for? Let's go."


	9. Chapter 9

As Elliot slides his figure gingerly into the sedan that Munch procured from the now dispersed intersection that his captain and Olivia had vacated from what seems ages ago, and in the brief moment that the dome light flashes on before the men close their doors, he gets a really good look at Elliot's physical condition. The pox scabs are various and dark, appearing mostly on the man's face and disappear down his neck. The skin not covered by spots is a sickly white. The usually solid build of Elliot's body looks less threatening, less hulking, like he's lost weight and muscle mass in just the few days he's been ill.

Munch pauses to shake his head at Elliot, who is oblivious to his onceover as he buckles his seatbelt. "Damn," is all he mutters. The younger glances up under a growing frown.

"What?" Elliot self-consciously runs a hand over his mouth.

"Just admiring your new look."

"Well, I hate to break it to you, but this 'new look' is entirely temporary, John."

Munch shrugs and finally closes the driver side door. The silence between the men is awkward and only permeated by the sound of the car cutting through the misting rain and the nearly imperceptible noise of the mounted police radio. If either of them bothered to listen, they might hear the conversation between a bored-sounding dispatcher and a responding unit. The older detective meditates on the peculiarity of the location that he had finally discovered Elliot—not that it is strange for partners to crash at one another's places, as he had done this more times than he can count—but that he had been in Olivia's bed. John filters through the flash of envy and his never-ending affection for the younger woman, and considers that, who knows, his presence in such an intimate setting may very well be entirely innocent. He is covered in chicken pox and the illness is punctuated by a case of pneumonia. Elliot coughs wetly on cue. Munch figures that this must appeal to some stifled maternal instinct buried deep within Olivia's psyche.

If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck…

However, there is a much louder voice in his head that says the two have most likely crashed through the final barrier from friendship to a more physical connection. Hell, with the way she longingly stares at Elliot, it might simply be something more than just sex, at least on her end. Their assumed coupling is whispered about and the long-standing in joke at the precinct, but up until now nothing more than rumor. The two are taking quite a big risk, as fraternization is considered a chancy form of insubordination. Hooking up on the side creates distraction, can lead to tumult in the workplace, and all kinds of objectionable feelings—especially when the relationship that almost always begins as some kind of codependent attraction finds its eventual ending—and can place others including themselves in danger as a result of said distraction.

Something falls into place in Munch's head at that thought. Distraction, he wonders, and then he contemplates Olivia's current state. She has been quite preoccupied lately, which no doubt contributed to her injuries.

Elliot can feel Munch's scrutiny, and although he considers the other man hardly an actual threat, he cannot seem to meet his eyes. Normally Elliot does not shy away from confrontation—hell, he's the one who usually is the cause of it—but the circumstances strike him as difficult to explain. Munch is patiently weaving through traffic. The sky is heavy with precipitation and pitch black, and Elliot fiddles with the cuffs of his sleeves, pinching the skin underneath to satisfy the craving to scrape the surface raw. The younger man chances a look away from the passenger side window and at Munch, whose eyes are deceptively shaded by his glasses and he wonders momentarily, not for the first time, how he manages to see out of the things in the dark.

After several counts of awkward silence, Elliot clears his throat. "Do you know anything about Liv's condition?" It seems like trivial conversation, and Munch raises his eyebrows at him almost like he's surprised by the attempt.

"I know just as much as you do," he says, mouth remaining in a grim line.

"What was her condition when the medics took her in?"

Munch pauses at a stoplight. "Bad enough for an ambulance ride."

Elliot feels the familiar sensation of irritation surface and it is a welcome diversion from the worry. It helps him focus less attention on his anxiety and misery and more on the aggravation of not knowing what to expect. He does not handle being uninformed very well, and certainly does not know how to deal with sticky feelings like fear.

"Was she breathing?"

"Looked like it. Her injuries were mostly to the head."

"Great," Elliot grumbles. He's had his fair share of injuries, concussions, punches to the face. He's a regular in the emergency room at Bellevue, thanks to his line of work and his own aggressive, physical nature. Stillness pervades and he finally snaps under the pressure. "Okay, John. Just ask."

"What do you mean?" Munch responds innocuously.

"You know damn well what."

"Oh, you mean about the fact that you're no longer living at home with your wife and now sleeping in your partner's bed? Is that it?"

Elliot chews on his bottom lip furiously, and his skin feels like it has been scalded. "It's definitely not what you are thinking," he says in a low tone.

"Okay," Munch answers casually, lifting his shoulders in a shrug.

"How did you know about me and Kathy?" Elliot asks, turning in his seat with a sharp glare. "I never told anyone at work except Olivia. Did she say anything to you?"

"No, Elliot. Cragen gave me permission to call you so that you were informed of Olivia's condition, and I happened to call your house, completely unaware of your impending divorce. Your son debriefed me over the phone."

"Oh. I'm not sleeping with her, John. I mean, not having sex. We've slept next to each other a few times, but were actually asleep, we weren't doing anything."

"Honestly, Elliot, I wouldn't blame you if you were. Olivia is an amazing woman."

"John, we haven't done…we're just—well, we're friends. And she's my partner."

"Wouldn't be the first time partners get a little too close."

Elliot squeezes the bridge of his nose. "I would never use Olivia for sex. I respect her more than that."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. She deserves the best."

"Yes, she does."

The car swivels into the parking garage of Bellevue, gloomy and ominous. "You know, Elliot, you are a lucky man. Don't be shocked to find that Olivia is in love with you, because I believe she always has been."

Munch finds an available parking space on the first floor, which is practically unheard of and quite convenient, because the ER is very close, and Elliot can escape the confines of the car and this particular conversation.

Just as Elliot reaches for the handle to open the passenger door, Munch continues. "Just be careful. Don't keep her waiting and don't string her along giving her any ideas that you're feelings are in kind to hers if your heart's not in it. She needs a man in her life that is serious about her and her alone. And don't make the same mistake that I have and keep your romance under wraps to avoid reprimand at work. Break up the partnership so that you can take your love for each other public. This will be important to her."

Elliot stares at the man for several silent seconds, unsure of how to respond to Munch's advice. He feels like he has tripped into some kind of twilight zone where everyone is aware of something that he simply cannot see or understand. Munch assumes that Olivia is in love with him and that if they are not sleeping together, they will eventually. He honestly has not put much thought into a relationship with her, although he has certainly thought about what it'd be like to see her away from work, shed of her hard ass persona, and in all her naked glory.

He's not sure how to respond, so he pushes off of the seat and into the biting winter air. Munch follows and they both head toward the ER entrance soundlessly.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the two men creep up to the front desk of the bottom floor of the hospital, Elliot's brain is immersed in an incredible sense of déjà vu, and he figures this is probably because he has been in this very place two other times in one week. He thinks that he's met his quota for the year, and will definitely try to avoid public health issues and serious injuries after this go around. The nurse behind the desk identifies Elliot immediately—she doesn't say as much, but he can see the recognition light up her eyes. "Detective! Didn't we just get rid of you this morning? Is everything okay?"

He winces, allowing a quick glance in Munch's direction. The other man's face is a stone wall. "Yeah, I'm fine. Feeling a lot better now, thanks."

The nurse grabs something out of a box in front of her and reveals an offensive paper respirator that she slides across the counter in between them. He takes it reluctantly, wrapping the loathsome elastic strings around his ears. She smiles sweetly. "Thank you. So, what can I do for you? Did you need to see someone?"

Elliot can feel his shoulders tense with apprehension. "My partner was brought in with a head injury. I've come to see her."

Her expression drops in shock. "Oh, that's right. I saw her come in, but I didn't realize she was your partner. I'm sorry." The woman moves to her computer and her fingers clack away at the keyboard. "Let's see where they've stashed her," she says softly. After a few moments, she speaks again. "It looks like the doctors have her in an exam room. Do you want me to check on her status for you?"

Munch and Elliot look at her in bemused perplexity. "Well, we came all the way down here to see her. Yes, please do."

Just as the nurse leaves, a familiar person saunters over from the hallway to the left. Fin is maddeningly unreadable and Elliot thinks impatiently that the only time he cannot seem to read a person's body language is when he is sick and his partner's life hangs in the balance. Fin's studies him, shocked for fraction of a heartbeat before he brings his face back to one of impassivity.

"Hey," he says, wrinkling his brow. "Man, Elliot, you look like a truck ran you over a few times. Didn't the captain tell you to try and keep him at home?" He directs his attention to his quiet partner, who has hung back away from the bustling movement of the front area and moved toward a couple of chairs lined up by the wall.

"Where there is a will, there is a way," Munch says and takes a seat.

Fin's tawny-colored eyes are frosty. "Well, aren't you full of it tonight?"

Elliot waves a hand to bring the focus away from the typical banter between the two and onto the matter at hand. "How's Liv?"

"Haven't seen her yet, Elliot. I just came over from central booking. Cap's with her right now, so we should hear about how she's doing any minute now."

"Did Wilson say anything to you? About why he did it?"

Fin moves to the other side of Munch and falls into the chair messily and his leather jacket creaks in protest. "Dude lawyered up as soon as he got done taking his glamor shots. I wasn't able to get nothin' outta him."

"Of course," Elliot coughs.

The nurse returns after a few minutes with a hesitant smile. "Hey, guys. I just checked on Detective Benson, and it looks like she returned from having a head CT a moment ago. I let your captain know that you are waiting to hear any word, so he said he'd come out as soon as she is settled and he has a chance to talk with her doctor."

"Is she awake?" Elliot asks apprehensively, thinking of Janeal McIntyre and that her head injury had been so bad, she'd had to be given heavy sedatives and placed into an induced coma. He imagines Olivia lying in a hospital bed and covered in tubes and machinery, and banishes the thought when he feels panic seize his chest. He then remembers her in their moment of evening calm—sitting together easily, watching her TV, picking at her crappy frozen dinner. Smiling. He recalls how warm he'd been, not just because of the fever, but something else that felt foreign—a sensation that he'd not felt for close to two decades—piercing, heady attraction to a woman other than his wife, and more than just the zipper variety.

The nurse brings him back to the present. "She was making purposeful movements, from what I have been told."

"What's that mean?" Munch queries from his seat.

"We measure levels of trauma to the brain by something called the 'Glasgow Coma Scale.' Her nurse said that she was testing at the normal levels, which is a great sign. But no, she was not awake at the time." She takes one more moment to cast a sympathetic glance at them, and then clasps her hands together. "I've got to get back to the desk, but come see me if you have any other questions."

"Thanks," Fin says at her retreating form.

The emergency room erupts into chaos upon an approaching level one trauma, and the men sit quietly as they watch the scene unfold. EMTs bustle in with haste, one medic straddling the person on the gurney who is covered in bright red splashes of blood, and he is performing chest compressions furiously. The lifeless individual looks very young, he's probably not even a legal adult. Medical personnel gown effortlessly and chase after them to a room shielded by blinds so that the spectacle stops with the slam of the door swinging shut.

Elliot palms his thighs restlessly, letting his eyes close. Right as he begins to sense the growing edginess building with the need to escape, Fin's hand grips his forearm and he is jerked from his cerebral state. Cragen's walks with purpose over to them, arms crossed. Elliot pushes away from the wall. "Captain," he says resolutely.

His superior does not seem surprised by his presence. "Elliot."

"How is she?"

Cragen stares at him, likely judging his physical condition before proceeding. "She's okay." The three men all let out a relieved sigh. "She did sustain an injury to the top part of something called her maxilla bone, which is basically where her cheek meets her eye socket. From what the x-ray shows, there's mild swelling, but no visible fracture anywhere. There's also a small subdermal hematoma to the back of her head. They didn't see any spinal or internal injuries, so the doctors are pretty confident she'll be all right."

"Can I see her?" Elliot asks shamelessly, stepping forward in fervor.

Cragen heaves a sigh, then nods, and he does not waste any time. "Elliot," Cragen calls to him and the detective turns. "Room 4."

"Thanks, Cap."

Nobody appears to question his presence in the space designated for patients and busily moving sundry nurses and doctors. Elliot sees the door he's searching for and impulsively shoves forward, not affording him any hesitation before he sees her.

The wounds are most noticeable to the right side of her face. Her eye is swollen shut, and there is a butterfly bandage gracing the skin right below the lower lid. There is a nasal cannula positioned underneath her nose, dispensing a light amount of oxygen, various wires protruding from her loose gown, and an IV port is taped to the crook of her left elbow. He moves around the foot of her bed and sits carefully off to her side in a chair that has been pulled up close enough for him to reach out and touch the delicate skin of her wrist.

He watches her breathe and listens to the minute sound of the beeping heart monitor, allowing his head to sink toward the mattress until it comes into contact with her hand. He presses his lips onto her knuckles, and then threads his fingers into hers, appreciating the warmness of her flesh. It is only in that moment that he can relax and feel that she truly will be okay.


	10. Chapter 10

Olivia finally feels rested. Finally. For a moment she relishes the delightful effect of the comforting embrace of tranquility, of being warm and relaxed, and of having no other worries than simply remaining asleep. A shock of lucidity rips through her when she remembers her last conscious moments—Wilson on top of her prone body throwing fisted clouts to her head—Elliot staying at her place while he recuperates—and her muscles tense in recollection of the pain and fear and the resounding worry.

A hand clutches her left forearm and a voice erupts at her side, but she is in such a state of panic that she doesn't hear any of the words, just that it is a man's voice and that Wilson is trying to kill her and that she must have been unconscious for some time to make her feel this restored. She pushes at the grip as forcefully as she can and lets out a sharp cry, putting her hands up to her chin in a defensive position, ready to fight.

"Liv, Liv, Liv…it's okay," the man says, taking hold of her face with both palms against her cheeks. The voice is familiar and comforting, but the gentle, reassuring action doesn't correlate with who he is and it feels all too alien. "You're okay," he continues, using his thumbs to stroke her face delicately. The edge of his finger skims the sensitive spot under her right eye. She grimaces. "Liv, look at me."

She realizes then that she has not yet opened her eyes, and when she does, she immediately notices Elliot looming over her. His presence puts her at ease and she allows herself to calm down her frazzled nerves. She no longer feels as though she is in a threatened position with him at her side. She also realizes that the lights above her are far too bright and that her vision is slightly skewed, as she is seeing doubles. That can't be good.

"El," she whispers, bringing her fingers up to cover her eyes.

He moves his hands to her shoulders, cautious yet intimate. "You okay there, partner? You need anything?"

Olivia clears her throat. "Yeah, can you turn these damn lights down?"

"Sure," he responds and the weight of his embrace leaves her arms as he obliges to her request. The intense brightness of the overhead bulb goes out and she removes her fingers. The only available light source is the built-in lamp that illuminates her bed, but it doesn't bother her, so she decides it is acceptable.

"Thanks."

Elliot answers in a sigh as he returns to her side and sits in the chair next to her.

She's in the hospital.

That means someone came to her rescue. Somewhere in her subconscious she recalls the memory of Wilson's filthy hands pushing up her shirt for what she presumes to be his opportunity to victimize her. She squeezes her eyes shut, and the action causes a barb of pain to flare up at her swollen right cheekbone. "What happened?"

Elliot moves around restlessly and takes a few seconds to respond. "Munch and Fin found you pinned under Wilson in one of the library conference rooms, about ready to use his knife on you. They were able to get him to disarm himself and he went into custody without any resistance."

She turns and looks at him with a driving intensity. She will accept whatever his answer is to her question, regardless of what it makes her become. She can handle victims of sexual assault and their grieving families, she can handle the sickest perps of New York, so she can handle being a victim herself. "Did he…?" Despite her resolve, she cannot seem to finish her inquiry. Did he rape me?

He shakes his head, folding his arms and she watches his physical ministrations for deception even though she knows he'd never lie to her about something this serious. "No. He didn't even get a chance, Liv." She lets out a relieved breath that trembles a little.

A couple of heartbeats pass before she speaks again. "So, what's the prognosis? Concussion?"

"You took some hits to the head, but they didn't see any fractures or internal bleeding. There was some underlying hematoma and your eye is swollen, but you were very fortunate. Not a lot of damage was done."

"How long was I out?" She tests the back of her head and feels a protruding, painful bump.

"A few hours."

"Jesus," she mutters, then lets her gaze sweep his form. Her focus is better now, and there is no longer two Elliots dancing before her, only one solemn, unmoving figure in his seat looking dark and pensive. He seems tired. "How are you feeling?"

"Me?" he asks, surprised. "I'm fine."

"How long ago did you take your medication, El?"

He laughs quietly, coughs, and shakes his head. "Don't worry, I've been a good boy. I forgot the pills back at your place, but the nurses were nice and gave me a booster."

"Good."

Elliot leans forward, the smile gone and a disconsolate grimace in place. She watches him stare at his hands just before he takes one of hers into his own. She cannot help but feel that the act is still strange for them. When did they start holding hands? When did they start touching each other at all in general? He has been off-limits territory to her for such a long time, even when he'd announced unceremoniously that he and Kathy were getting divorced and it was suddenly all right to do so. She'd respected his boundaries, however, and never pursued anything for the sake of their partnership. She didn't even let her glances linger too long on him. He always seems to know that her eyes are on him-he almost always knowingly meets her stare.

"This is my fault," he says out of thin air.

She is struck dumb for a brief second. "How is this your fault, Elliot?"

"If you weren't so worried about taking care of me, you'd've had a clearer head and could have avoided getting hurt."

"Elliot," Olivia says, giving him a funny look. "You didn't do anything to me. Wilson got the drop on me because I wasn't paying close enough attention."

"You should have been more focused on work. If you weren't so distracted by this chicken pox shit, this—" he indicates her wounds with a gesture of his hand, "-wouldn't have happened."

"Who else would make sure you were okay?"

"I can take care of myself, Liv."

She lets a side-long grin grace her lips. "Really? Because you sure seemed pretty clueless when I dropped in that first night. And if I hadn't've dragged you to the ER, you'd probably have gone into septic shock by now."

He fails to read her dry humor. "My point is if you weren't so worried about taking care of my stupid ass, you wouldn't have been so exhausted."

"Elliot," she says as a warning. He allows his thumb to run along her knuckles, and a fluttering begins to erupt in her abdomen.

"In all reality, I should have been there to back you up."

"You can't control being sick, El."

"Okay, but it's my responsibility to protect you." His eyes convey an sincerity that softens the edges of her sarcastic grin. She knows that his concept of duty is what defines him—he will do anything to keep those that he cares about most safe.

"You won't be able to defend me all the time." Something about this conversation seems reminiscent of their hospital conversation about a year ago, right before she'd transferred out of SVU because of the emotional conflict between her and Elliot. Despite a couple decades of both military combat experience and police work, he'd placed too much emphasis on protecting her when he should have saved little Ryan Clifford's life—the boy had been a few feet away, but he'd made the decision to scramble to her side when he'd seen blood soaking through her fingers as she'd gripped her neck.

Olivia bites her lip. She tries to avoid thinking about that awful day. Elliot had never forgiven himself, and had even become hostile to her, accusing her of taking away his attention from what was most important—placing the culpability at her feet, as if the boy's inevitable death was her fault somehow. She recalls the singe of hurt and the spring of tears in her eyes when he had unleashed his anger on her in front of everyone at the precinct. His control had been razor thin at that point.

It had almost been a relief of sorts to join forces with the FBI. Her stint as Persephone James had landed her in a place she never imagined—all the way across the country, in the clutches of a group of crunchy, beard-friendly, eco-maniacal domestic terrorists. Hillsden was the farm-friendly suburb of hipster Portland, and the place had been the epitome of laidback West Coast complacency. No one was ever in a hurry, green living was a religion, and almost everyone she encountered was stoned.

After a few days of impersonating the life of the tomato-growing eco-terrorist, she'd missed the rush of New York, the unique assemblage of ritzy skyscrapers, expensive brownstones, and depressing ghettos, but she had mostly missed Elliot, even all of that brooding intensity and fiery rage. She'd dreamt of him nearly every night, even attempted to call him, but had never had the guts to talk when he'd answered.

Olivia brings herself to present and adjusts her bed so that she is in a sitting position. She meets his gaze and she searches his expression. "I don't blame you, Elliot."

"I can't stand to see you get hurt."

"You've seen me get injured before. It's all part of the job." She's feeling apprehensive, uneasy, and suddenly their partnership seems finite whereas before she'd never even considered what the end would be like.

"I know," he nods, holding her gaze until she decides to look away.

"What the hell is going on with you, Elliot?"

The emotion in his façade fades into impassivity and she immediately regrets her hasty words. "Things have changed."

"What?"

"It's different between us."

She barks an exasperated laugh. "How have things changed between us? Because I took care of you when you were sick? How many times have we done the same for each other?"

His mouth thins to a frustrated line. "You know what I'm talking about." He pulls his hand away from hers and leans back, folding his arms defiantly and the action makes her aggravated.

"No I don't," she says stubbornly, thinking instantly of their nights lying next to one another, cuddling, even awakening to their bodies spooning. Her face blushes in recollection of the heat and yearning she'd felt when he had pulled her to him. She remembers the solid wall of his chest and stomach and the gentleness of his hand on her hip.

Olivia tugs the cannula from her nose and winces when she uses too many of her facial muscles. She curses Wilson silently for pushing her headlong into the damn chair and using her head for boxing practice.

"I think you know exactly what I'm talking about." Elliot is narrowing his eyes, appearing smug.

"Want to fill me in here, El? I'm not sure we're on the same wave length."

Elliot's chin ducks and he chews his bottom lip. He's seriously contemplating something, and she's not entirely sure she'll be happy with the outcome, especially with the muted grimness of his mannerisms. This does not look good. Olivia thinks of his words before retreating outside of Rebecca Clifford's hospital room, that she and the job were the only things holding him together—that they couldn't be partners if they kept letting their personal feelings interfere with the job. She suddenly fears what he has to say, almost wills him to stay quiet, to forget the past week and a half.

"Elliot—" she says in a small voice, but she is cut off when he pushes forward from his seat and grabs her chin, earnestly pressing his mouth to hers. She is initially dazed, lips and body stiff with surprise. She tries to gage his response to this spontaneous decision, but his expression is hidden by closed lids. He cups her left cheek with his other hand and she lets her eyes slip shut, softens her mouth. She grasps the soft fabric of his sweatshirt and pulls him closer. She has been kissed many times in her life by a wide array of men of various different physiques and backgrounds, and she remembers make out sessions that left her swooning, but she cannot recall ever feeling so ablaze with desire before. The feeling is heady and drowns her with the fierce hunger that has always been simmering below the surface.

He brings her bottom lip into his mouth as she holds his shirt. She moans a little when his tongue nudges her parted lips and she obliges to his silent request for permission to let him in. The intensity grows and soon their teeth are colliding, tongues taking and receiving, hands roaming. Her lips are tingling when he pulls away and she feels disappointed by how cold she is without him against her.

She opens her eyes and when she sees him, she doesn't notice the ridiculous, scabby chicken pox, but rather the manifestation of longing and panic in his expression. Olivia stares into the face she's looked at for nearly a decade across from her desk, longed for in her most secret of dreams. Fantasized about.

Her skin burns hotly and she hates the self-consciousness and melancholy clawing its way up her spine.

A quick knock on the door to her room startles them both and Olivia grumbles audibly when it swings open and a kindly nurse peeks in.

"Knock, knock," she says in a sing-songy voice and Olivia cringes. "Oh, great! You're awake! Your doctor will be very pleased." The woman enters the room and glances at Elliot before focusing her attention on the patient in the hospital bed. "Elliot, how are you feeling?"

"I'm all right," he says blankly, swiping at his mouth. He gets to his feet.

"Where are you going?" Olivia asks, alarmed.

"I need some air. I'll see you later, Liv. Okay?"

He's gone before another word is spoken. Her jaw hangs ajar and she only notices when the nurse knits her eyebrows in concern.

"Everything okay, Detective?" Her voice is genuinely sympathetic.

Olivia laughs contemptuously and nods after a moment of staring at the door. "Yeah."

Not really.


	11. Chapter 11

Elliot's lungs are burning just enough to make his chest hurt in a similar way as before, when he'd been enveloped with a radiating fever, the chills, and a ragged cough, but he ignores the sensation as he climbs the steps of Bellevue's main stairwell to reach the rooftop. He admittedly knows the way like the back of his hand because of the frequency in which he has visited, but also the relentless need to escape from emotions that become too potent that ironically occur right at this very location. At the moment, he is consumed by blinding panic – the kind that ignores reason and sensibility and instead turns to fight or flight. He's very acquainted with these feelings, but he isn't naturally one to directly confront them or give them even an acknowledging glance when somebody becomes concerned or more typically, pissed off at him.

He reaches the top of the stairwell and pauses half-bent, staring at the exit sign on the rooftop door; he feels slightly woozy for a second and knows that charging up so many flights in his condition – just days ago diagnosed with pneumonia for God's sake – is probably not the brightest idea he's ever had, but then again he's done far more imprudent things. The hasty escape illustrates his thoughtless impulsiveness much more convincingly when his vision grays briefly while his lungs seize and his chest spasms. He probably should have let somebody know where he is headed just in case he does something humiliating, like faint.

Crackles erupt in his feeble chest and try as he might, he cannot stop the heavy burst of coughing. His throat is raw from the constant, repeated abuse and the force of it – he is left winded once they die down. Elliot decides against sitting on the last step and pushes to the roof. The frigid air is relieving as a distraction from his throat, the maddening itch, and his overwrought nerves, but he can't enjoy it too long. His lungs, already stressed, tighten painfully in response to the temperature change. His chest begins to throb and he pushes on the firm wall of the pectoral muscles just under his right collar bone with a fist. He can just hear Olivia's sardonic voice in his head giving him shit for being such an obstinate ass and going out into the icy weather while ill. Christ Elliot. Didn't your mother ever tell you to stay inside when you have a cold? He's done it countless times before, but she rails on him all the same like a watchful, yet cheeky mother hen.

His thoughts stray to her and he recognizes that same uneasy anxiety boil to the surface. He has kissed her. Olivia Benson. He has fucking kissed Olivia Benson. His partner. They'd committed an act that could result in suspension – shit, they may just take his badge since he's become the resident habitual line-stepper. He and Olivia have hardly ever platonically touched each other up until a week ago, they hadn't hugged, hadn't even let their gazes toward one another remain too long, as one would break the stare once the heavy weight of his wedding ring or the foreboding reprimand was too much to gamble with.

Elliot smacks his palm to his forehead. Stupid. He'd let himself slip, let the sudden need for comfort, her scent, her pouty lips overwhelm his usually functioning logic. He is unable to keep the recent memory from invading his thoughts. She had initially been hesitant, but her lips had become soft, pliant. His senses had been buzzing furiously by the time she had opened her mouth to him. He can still taste her on his lips; he can see the shell-shocked expression on her face once he'd pulled away. He'd been overwhelmed by the desire to do it again, plunder her mouth, tangle his hands in her hair, feel her body pressed to his, but instead he expected for her to slap or even punch him in his pox-covered face for throwing himself at her while she was so vulnerable.

He lets his back fall against a brick-laid structure behind him, probably a chimney or something, and allows his tired form to descend until he is seated on the cold cement of the building. The chill seeps through the fabric of his pants to the backs of his legs, but he does not care. He's screwed things up so badly, and he's sure he will lose whatever is left of that which he holds dear. He's already lost Kathy – lost her long before the actual divorce had been initiated – and he stands to lose the kids because that's just a given. They've always sided with their mom and he can't fault them, because he's been in their shoes before. He understands the anger and frustration that children feel being in between a mother who is always there to a father who never is.

Even though his parents remained married until the elder Stabler's death, Joe and Bernie may as well have lived on different planets. She was wild, free-spirited, eccentric even; his father was always degrading her, overly critical. Elliot and his brothers and sisters had sincerely hated the man, wished he'd disappear. Police work had kept him away most of the time anyway. He had vowed never to treat his own family the same, but somehow he'd stumbled into his father's wretched life, with the unhappy spouse and temperamental kids, sans the alcoholism and infidelity. He hates the parallels, but he cannot avoid the fact that he and his father are too much alike, so in a way he can't blame Kathy and the kids for wanting relief.

Olivia is definitely the hardest to lose if she decides to leave him again – he'd made that admission to her after the Gitano case, just before she'd transferred. He remembers feeling the oppressive anger consume him over walking into the bullpen and seeing her empty desk, the devastation after it had happened once again when she'd left for her work with the FBI. He'd basically lost any semblance of control, had nothing left to lose and felt like he was wading around in muddy waters at night, fumbling around blindly trying to find his way through the fucked up life he'd found himself in.

He is afraid of completely losing it this time, and if she had bailed on him after their emotional dependence had come to a head a year ago, then she'd definitely take off after this. He raps the back of his head against the grainy brick wall behind him, ignoring the flare up of pain.

Elliot's not sure how long he sits with his eyes closed in his meditative state when the door swings open and slams against the brick, startling him, and Fin and Munch bumble over the threshold of the roof and take careful steps toward him like he's a rabid animal. Like they are trying to gauge his reaction to their sudden presence. He's not surprised to see them. He's sure they know exactly where to look when he needs space. He always has been somewhat predictable, and he is a creature of habit, so if he isn't in the nearest vicinity after any tumult, the roof is a good place to find him. Elliot doesn't get up; his chest is still a bit sore and breaths more shallow than they should be. He should probably have a dosage of the inhaler – it's been hours since the last breathing treatment – but he thinks bemusedly of the device sitting next to Olivia's bed. He'd left everything, literally everything including his wallet, back at her place in his mad scramble to see her. Elliot coughs experimentally, but it still feels tight. He mentally shrugs. It's not going to heal up right away, he tells himself.

"What's up?" he asks the men who have come to a stop before him.

Fin's expression is hard, but then it usually is. "What're you doing hanging out up here?"

Elliot studies the dark skyline. Despite the stars hiding behind heavy clouds, the city lights offer their own twinkle. "I needed some air," he responds flatly.

"Don't you think that being outside in 20 degree winter weather is bad for you?" Munch chimes in. "It's not enough that you're already breathing in this carcinogenic Manhattan smog."

Elliot lets his eyes drift up to meet his colleague's. "Next you'll tell me I need to stop drinking genetically modified milk, buy organic, and start crunching on granola and wheatgrass."

Fin moves effortlessly into the conversation without batting an eyelash. "My mother tried out that diet."

Munch turns to his partner. "Yeah? Mother knows best, right?"

"She died not long after that. Remember, partner? You went to her funeral."

"Wow," the slighter man deadpans and shakes his head. "That's awkward."

Elliot breathes a soft, bewildered laugh, and then narrows his eyes under a growing frown. "Really, what's going on? Is Olivia all right?"

The partners square off their postures, turning to him once again. "Sure she is," Munch says solemnly. "Physically she'll be fine, but you should be in her room visiting with her, or else you'd know that."

Fin crosses his arms. "We went to see her and were kind of surprised you weren't perched at her bedside."

The younger detective feels a flash of panic slice through his abdomen and up past his throat. He's surprised he can speak at all. "What did she say?" he asks, anticipating more of Munch's horribly accurate telekinetic understanding of their situation and his idea of couples' therapy.

"Just that you two were talking and that you bailed on her for some space."

Munch makes a tsking noise with his teeth. "Elliot, you obviously weren't paying attention during our little chat."

Elliot decides he's done feeling as though he is being surrounded and admonished, so he climbs to his feet slowly to stand at his fullest height. Intimidation is his favorite tactic when he wants people to bend to his will. That, coupled with a furious scowl works wonders. "Look, what she and I talk about isn't really anyone's business, and if I want to catch a breather up here, that's what I'm gonna do." Elliot turns away, but backtracks with a hand swiping his face. "Why is everyone so interested in what is going on between her and I anyway? We're just partners." He tone is insistent, but he knows that this is a lie. They definitely are not just partners.

Munch and Fin are used to his outbursts, so they hardly flinch. "We know you're just partners. Nobody is questioning that."

Fin is right, and Elliot clenches his teeth with the realization that he's saying too much without provocation. "Is Olivia pissed off at me?"

A voice sounds to their left. "What is this, a very special after school TV drama featuring Elliot Stabler?"

The three men turn and regard their captain. "Hey, Cap," Fin says, tucking his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

"What's going on up here?"

"Getting some air," Munch responds in an unreadable tone.

Cragen saunters over. "Hey guys, I'd like to speak to Elliot alone. Can we have a minute?" Elliot feels a sinking sensation in his gut as he watches the other two detectives return through the door and close it with a resounding thud, leaving him with his stone-faced captain. Cragen's expression is hard at first, sweeping the younger man's form, but it transforms into something lingering between pity and amusement. "You know, it's about 15 degrees below freezing and you're out here in a sweatshirt and no hat. Call me crazy, but a pneumonia patient probably shouldn't be exposing himself to the elements like that."

Elliot nods. "I know. I just wanted to come up here to think for a minute."

Cragen crosses his arms and leans into the brick structure. "I talked with Olivia. She told me that there was some tension between you two, which is nothing new. She also told me that she's been pretty worried about you for quite a number of days now."

He doesn't really like the way this is steering. But if Cragen were about to reprimand him for fraternizing he sure as hell wouldn't be beating around the bush, he'd simply come right out and say it. "She's been helping me out a little bit."

"Yeah, I'm aware of that. The problem, Elliot, is that she has been running on empty for about three days straight. She'll never admit to it, but she's been focused so much on your health and well-being that she's neglecting her work."

Elliot feels offended for her, so he immediately jumps into defense mode. "She would never neglect her work. Olivia is an excellent cop."

"You think I don't realize that, Elliot? If she weren't great at what she does, she'd have never been considered for her position in SVU."

"So she's been a little distracted. You can't tell me that we haven't all been there before. Everybody has shit come up once in a while that takes their mind off of the job."

"That's true, but I've noticed a decline the past week. The two of you have been riding a thin line for a while now, and I'm starting to see a pattern develop. Anytime one of you has something happen, the other either makes monumental slip-ups or the two of you jump off a cliff together. We can't have that occur on our floor. There's no room for any errors, Elliot."

"She didn't do anything wrong, Captain, she was blindsided by the perp. That was completely out of her control."

"Olivia could have avoided her injuries if she'd had a clear head."

Elliot studies his superior for a moment, his ears burning despite the cold. "What are you saying?"

Cragen stares back, his expression uncompromising. "I know Olivia came back from the FBI not that long ago, but I'm teaming you two up with other people until further notice."

"Captain—" Elliot says in a strangled voice, but he is cut off abruptly.

"It's not up for negotiation, Elliot. I'm separating you two before one of you gets hurt or, God forbid, killed as a result of your lack of trust in each other."

"We don't have a problem trusting one another!"

"Why do you think it's necessary to always look over your shoulder to make sure she's okay, then?"

Elliot scratches at his neck irritably and winces when his fingernails scrape too hard at a scab. "Because…I don't know, because I want to be sure that she is okay."

"If you aren't one-hundred percent certain that she can take care of her own, then you need a new partner."

The detective is dumbfounded, and his jaw hangs slack in bewilderment. He's heard this line before, but it came from Olivia's own mouth, long ago. "How does Olivia getting hurt in the line of duty have anything to do with me trusting her?"

Cragen clears his throat. He's losing patience. "My point with all this is that your co-dependent thing going on between the two of you is nothing that I wasn't already aware of. Now, I want you to know that while this split isn't permanent, if I think that you and she operate better at different desks, then it may stay that way."

"So," Elliot says after a few silent heartbeats. "You sending Olivia back to Computer Crimes? A new precinct? You gonna pair me up with another blowhard like Blaine or somebody like Beck who can't hack it?"

The captain raises his eyebrows. "Nope. You and Liv are swapping with Munch and Fin. I'll make the final decisions tomorrow. In the meantime get back inside and warm up, visit her, and then go home and get some rest."

"Does Liv know about the changes?"

"Yep."

Elliot chews on his bottom lip in uncertainty just as he moves toward the door. "How'd she take it?"

"She's pretty pissed."

He laughs softly. "I figured."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If she sees Elliot, she just may end up doing something regretful, like cracking the remote to her hospital TV upside his head. He's destroyed everything. In one brief sweet, heavenly moment her life had suddenly bloomed into one that made sense and felt right, but that'd inevitably fallen away to reveal the awful truth behind the action. Once they'd moved over that boundary, there would be no turning back. There can't be. Cragen's impromptu welfare check was a cleverly disguised maneuver to inform her of the upcoming changes to the department. His claims were that she and Elliot had spent more time together than anybody else on the entire floor, and it was about time for her to pair up with another in order to get her out of the funk she'd been in for a while, or so he had said as he'd stared down at her.

She'd chalk that up to the Captain feeling heat from the higher ups for something that had gone awry during an investigation because of their actions, but she can't help but be skeptical that Cragen's decisions aren't entirely driven by his superiors, or even his own doing. She doesn't want to assume that Elliot is sabotaging their working relationship to swoop in for a more intimate one, but this is pretty fucking convenient, in her opinion.

Olivia chuckles darkly at the horrible dramatic tragedy that her life has become. Her innermost desire finally comes to play out in reality and it results in the crumble of her partnership, one of the only things she even has, aside from her job which is her bread and butter. Her livelihood.

She's torn between what her heart truly longs for and what she knows as comfortable, her home. What is she going to do when she looks up from her endless paperwork and Elliot is no longer there, plucking away at his keyboard, unaware of her quiet observation?

It won't feel the same to see Fin or Munch, or even someone else sitting in Elliot's chair. Cragen insists that neither will be transferred to other precincts. They will both remain in SVU. He'd called it a semi-permanent reassignment with the potential to remain that way.

She sinks into the adjusted bed and stares vaguely at the TV screen, hearing the door open but not regarding the new room occupant. She knows it's Elliot by the slow, heavy footfalls and the familiar smell of him as he approaches. He pauses silently to her right, and the swelling around her eye blocks the view of him. She's grateful for that. She doesn't want to see his face right now.

"Hey," he says simply.

Olivia turns regardless of her reservations and immediately butterflies begin to flutter madly at the sight of him. What the hell, Olivia? she thinks in exasperation. You're supposed to be mad. She shoves the ridiculous teenage yearning down and tries her best to restructure it into frustration.

"What?" she asks, sounding unpleasant. She winces inwardly.

Elliot has an uncanny ability to ignore or deflect most of her wrath, and she chalks that up to living in a house full of women for nearly two decades. He's learned when to keep a straight face during certain types of tirades. Of course, he cannot always maintain that composure, especially when he jumps onto his sanctimonious soapbox after he feels morally outraged or a perv of particular monstrosity darkens his doorstep.

"You okay?" he says, seemingly unaware of her irritation. He reaches back and grabs a nearby rolling stool and takes a seat.

Olivia sighs. "No, Elliot, I'm not okay."

He nods, scraping at the skin behind his ear. She shoots him a warning glare, and he moves his fingers to her bed rail and wraps his hands around it as he leans toward her. "Sorry."

"What are you sorry about?"

Elliot shrugs his shoulders, appearing dubious of her loaded question. "Uh, scratching?"

She rolls her eyes. "Really?" Sometimes he can be seriously oblivious. His eyebrows tighten in response.

"What do you want me to be sorry about, Liv?"

"Cragen came in to see me. But I'm sure you already know that."

"Yeah," he prods, waiting for her to elaborate.

"And he's splitting us up."

Elliot does not look surprised at all. "I know. He told me about that already."

Olivia raises her hands in defeat. "And?"

"And what?"

"Are you sure you had no part in this?"

"What are you talking about?" The ire in his eyes is beginning to light up.

Olivia's gaze is sharp and suspicious. "You didn't ask for a new partner so that you could have your way with me?"

Elliot's face theatrically transforms from frustration to exasperation to mirth. "What?" he chuckles. "Olivia, you think that I'd go through the trouble to break up our partnership just to get you in the sack?"

She feels the anger boil at his ease. "I don't know, El. I don't understand how you can find any of this funny. Work isn't going to be the same, now. Doesn't our partnership matter at all to you?"

He schools his expression. "Of course it does. I'm not happy about the switch."

"You sure aren't acting the way I thought you would."

"What, you want me to rant and rave to make you feel like I'm offended? What good would that do me? It's not going to change anything."

A lump is forming in her throat – she shouts internally, don't you dare start crying. Tears prick the corners of her eyes. "Why the fuck did you kiss me, Elliot?"

He watches her intently for what seems a lifetime, likely evaluating what he should say so that he doesn't awaken the queen bitch in her that yearns to come screaming to the surface. "Because I wanted to. It felt right." He pauses. "I've wanted to for a long time."

Olivia allows her gaze to skim over the angles of his jaw, the broad shoulders, the scarred knuckles of his hands. She contemplates what it would be like to just give in. Let her infatuation of him take control without the threat of punishment on the horizon, without the guilt of being the mistress. It could be great, considering there'd be no need to get to know him and wonder if he was some sort of weirdo or had obnoxious personality traits. She already is quite acquainted with his bad side. It wouldn't be like one of her god-awful dates that almost always end up either using her as another notch in their belt or shying away from her because of the content of her work. With Elliot, it'd be like finally coming home.

"Elliot, it'll ruin everything—"

"Liv, don't try to convince yourself that we'd be a bad idea."

She can feel a headache beginning to mount. "I don't want my life to change. I like it the way it is." That's not entirely true, but it's the transition from her comfort zone to something indeterminate that scares her. There's no certainty in relationships—she thinks that he's very well aware of that—so what would happen if they don't work out? Their friendship, pretty much the only one she has, will be gone. There's no turning back afterward. She meets his eyes and she feels bad at the hurt there.

"What's this past week been if you're content to keep your life the way it is?"

"You were sick. I took care of you."

"That's all?"

"What else would it be?"

"Olivia," he says, and it sounds strange for him to use her full name. "You don't feel anything for me, is that it?"

She fiddles with the blanket covering her lower half. Of course she does. She always has. But the words lie huddled in the back of her throat. She cannot bring herself to admit that to him. "Elliot, I need some time to think about it." She places a hand onto her forehead, begging the tension and conversation to vanish somehow. "I'd like you to give me a day or two of space."

"Fine. If that's the way you want it."

She hears him leave, the door closing loudly.

Olivia examines her fingernails, hating herself for being such a coward.

She just hopes that she isn't inadvertently ruining the friendship she is trying to preserve by denying him.


	12. Chapter 12

A stack of old case files are piled on his desk when Elliot saunters to it early Monday morning, a full three weeks after his visit with Olivia in the hospital. He half-smiles at the mess of paperwork, thinking sardonically that he should only expect his team to leave him a mountain of cold cases to work on to ease him back into work. He's a good thirty minutes early so the floor is relatively soundless, the typical bustling of activity has yet to commence. He lets his eyes drift toward the adjoined desk and instantly notices that the image is wrong. Instead of the sterling silver Tiffany picture frame with the Benson women smiling to the photographer and various minutiae he'd become accustomed to over the years, the simple, pragmatic assortment of office supplies and abandoned coffee mug sit in its place. A short distance away is their new home, but the familiar items he's become used to now grace Fin's former desk.

The small grin drops. His recuperation had taken longer than he had thought—his body had flat refused to shake the pneumonia like he'd wanted to, but it had been somewhat his own fault. His follow up appointment, which admittedly he'd put off for far too long, had yielded unsatisfactory results. Elliot had skipped a few doses of the antiviral and had purged the inhaler after a couple days entirely. Dr. Crowley had given him a weary look, indicated that if the coughing persisted, it'd cause a pleural effusion and threatened to have to tap his lungs—thoracentesis is what he'd called the procedure—if he would not take the situation seriously. The idea of having fluid suctioned out of his lungs via needle had sounded like enough of an incentive to listen to the doc.

Olivia had returned to work only five days after the incident at the library, and while he'd been coughing his brains out and lying around his apartment pretty much all day, she had finished up the Wilson case with the rest of the crew. A normal person might have enjoyed the reprieve, but it'd go down as really the most unpleasant vacation he's ever taken away from the job. He'd spent almost his entire waking moments thinking about work and Olivia and what to expect upon his return. It didn't look good.

Although Kathy had tried to avoid a lot of conversation with Elliot during his surly moments, she'd taken pity on him and had dropped off some frozen meals and had cleaned his dirty laundry. It'd begun to pile up in the corner of his room. Whenever his fevers had broken, he'd sweat through his clothes and wake up drenched. His bedroom had started to smell like a middle school locker room.

The twins had stopped by for the weekend during that time but he's a miserable host, and he can tell that he'd done a lousy job entertaining them. They made it to Sunday morning before finally escaping the dreary confines of his apartment. Maureen brought him coffee during a brief visit from her college dorm, and he remembers being baffled by how much she resembles her mother both in looks and demeanor. The scabs had begun to fade (he's only managed to over-scratch a few hidden spots) when Kathleen dropped in begrudgingly. Elliot can tell that Kathy had done some arm-twisting to get the girl to do it. There's a forced air about her when she drops the container of pork noodle soup from the corner Chinese food restaurant onto his kitchen counter. She is almost a perfect rubber stamp of her old man, the complete opposite of her more glamorous older sister, with a splenetic disposition and snarky attitude to match.

Once his doctor had finally signed the release from medical leave, Elliot had felt like a frenzied bundle of nerves. He'd had so much time on his hands that he finally unpacked all of his shit and put it away in an organized manner. He had managed to stock his refrigerator with food, real food. Stuff from an actual grocery store. And he finally forced himself to purchase dinnerware—he'd been surviving off of paper plates and plastic cutlery for an embarrassing amount of time and he figured that it was no wonder he'd try to stay away from his apartment, that the flat depressed the hell out of him. He hadn't put the effort into making it his home.

Elliot lets a hand run over the overflowing folders, untidily crammed with miscellaneous papers, photographs, old fingerprint cards. The cold cases he's been handed look to be ranging from two to thirty-seven years old, once he thumbs through the stack and he sighs. Cragen had said just a week, Elliot. Give it a week to get your body used to working again. He's more than ready to get back out in the field. What his captain doesn't know is that he's been visiting his favorite gym since before he'd visited his doctor for the go ahead and really hitting the weights to make up for the fifteen pounds or so he's dropped since about a month ago.

A month. Damn.

His mind recoils at the thought; he's been on sick leave for four weeks and it feels to him like time escaped in a blink of an eye. Perhaps attributed to the fact that he spent most of that four weeks sleeping. But a lot can happen in four weeks. From the looks of things, this much is very clear.

As he wanders past the crib and onward to the back of the precinct, he pauses by Olivia's locker, letting his mind linger on his last memory of her. She'd been lying on her hospital bed with a resolute pout pulling at her mouth, turning it down and pinching her eyebrows. He'd have thought it pretty damn cute to see her in full tantrum mode if the willfulness didn't piss him off so much. What was she so afraid of? Had he seriously read her that wrong? After everything they'd been through, all of the mixed signals, she had no interest? Was he losing touch with his intuition or had he ever really had it to begin with?

Well, he knows that he's not that out of touch—he's sniffed out plenty of perps pretty accurately based on his gut feelings, so maybe it is just with women, or maybe just with Olivia that he turns into a bumbling fool.

Elliot recalls the last time they'd talked as he sits down onto the bench next to his locker. Short and to the point. He'd called for an update on the Wilson case, found out when the man's next court hearing was—one of many status updates until the perv finally pled guilty (his lawyer had decided on the most ridiculous and most abused not guilty defense, due to his mental disease or defect) or until the jury decided his fate—and to see if the victim made it through, to see if Olivia was okay. She'd only told him exactly what she needed to, remaining crisp, all business. He'd hung up his phone feeling stunned and disheartened at the coldness of her tone, the indifference in her words.

He remembers a couple days after being released from the hospital he'd attempted to see her, knew that if she answered her door the encounter may not be the most positive he's ever had with her, but she never actually responded to his determined knocking. He'd known that he was receiving the cold shoulder from her, but he could not do anything about it, so he'd opted to letting her ride it out until she'd get over it. Let it run its course.

He'd decided to refocus his attention to something meaningful, such as the victims of the Wilson case. Janeal McIntyre had made vast improvements after clinging to life in the ICU of Bellevue. She'd been downgraded from critical all the way to fair condition as of today, had been transferred to a rehab hospital a few days ago once it'd been determined what her future looked like according to her physical therapist and doctors. It was an incredible turn of events, and he was definitely grateful the girl had pulled through. Wilson was another story. From Elliot's perspective in the audience of the courtroom during the status hearing the man was taking his lumps on the inside. He knows that even criminals locked up in cages tend to have a moral compass—strange as it may seem—and that sexual predators are the target for violence by the general population, and sometimes even the facility staff members. The court systems will usually turn a blind eye to this abuse if the sick son of a bitch is bad enough.

Elliot opens his locker with a sigh, and then catches a glimpse of himself in the magnetized mirror he has attached to the metal door. He looks tired, even after all the time off he's had, and while the pox scabs have finally fallen off, he can still see faint red marks on his skin. His cheeks look hollowed out, which accentuates the stress lines already present, especially with the cold, dark shadows of the room and the hues of the early morning.

The locker room door pushes open with half-hearted ease and he feels his head peak in curiosity to see who has joined him, and his eyes fall on the familiar curves of his partner—former partner, with the light of the hallway outlining her form and bathing the front of her in darkness. He cannot see her expression, but he knows she sees him, as she pauses, letting the door swing shut with a thud.

Elliot is both relieved and uneasy in her presence. Especially when she simply stands there, hands hanging loosely at her sides. His eyes adjust and he can finally see her face. She's lost some weight too—she's a little more hard-edged and lean with the way her cheekbones and clavicles poke out a bit more than before. Oregon had been good to her, all that microbrew and organic shit; she'd put some weight on, but he'd admit in all the right places. She looked filled out when she'd come back. Now the rough living of New York has taken all of the softness away and returned the harsh lines and rigidity.

"Hey," he says eventually, refusing to take his gaze from her impenetrable one.

She studies him for a moment, eyes flitting somewhere between his face and his chest, a characteristic of hers that he enjoys for the familiarity. This is what she unconsciously does when she's pent up, jumpy. Normally when he edges in too close for comfort, something that rattles her because of the nearness. He'd never understood why she seemed so uneasy when they'd been close to one another, maybe due to the abandonment or lack of affection in her life as a child, but he now realizes this is likely a result of the feelings she has for him. Or at least the feelings she had, no telling if that's the case anymore. Wishful thinking on his part.

Olivia wordlessly turns to her locker around the other side of the row of metal cubbies. Just when he shakes his head for her pigheadedness, she speaks in a soft, low tone. "You've lost weight."

He snorts in a flippant way. "Speak for yourself."

There's a pause. "I've had a lot on my mind."

He nods at himself in the mirror. "Yeah, don't we all." He throws his grey sweatshirt over his head, the one that had nursed him through that confounded illness, and into his locker where it lands in a messy pile and yanks a pin-striped dress shirt off of a flimsy plastic hanger. He tosses the starched top around his shoulders and impatiently buttons himself into it, fingers working in slow, burning frustration.

Elliot is on the last button when Olivia rounds the lockers and stops a few feet away, resting a calm hand against the piercing cold metal. She looks like she wants to say something, but either cannot formulate the words, or hesitates—for whatever reason, he's not sure.

He places his palms against his knees as their eyes meet and hold for several seconds. Waiting. He bites his bottom lip, smoothing it with his tongue, letting his mind fall back to the completely out of character, impulsive decision to kiss her. It had been spontaneous, as he hadn't actually thought it out, hadn't considered the consequences. He'd been careful with his choices, especially the life-altering ones, when he found out he was going to become a father, a very young father. After that, he knew he'd have to shoot straight or not at all. Risk was something he could not mess around with. When he'd bent down to seize Olivia's mouth—none of that had been planned. It just happened. 

And here is the cost of mindless action. Stone-cold stares, broken partnerships. Loneliness.

"Elliot," she says, but never finishes, pausing with her mouth slackened slightly, as if she means to continue.

His eyes bore holes into hers. "I'm not sorry," he says unwarily. The desire to ravage her lips again drags through his senses with a relentlessness that is hard to ignore, and it takes almost everything he has to control the urge.

The corners of her mouth tip upward a fraction, but the tiny smile falls away just as fast as it had appeared. Instead, she pushes away from the lockers. "You look better."

"Liv," he says after her retreating form, fully outfitted for the work day.

She doesn't turn, just shoves her way through the door. "It's good to see you back to work, El."

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He gets a lot of claps to the back from the guys of the department once he boldly moves through the doors of the locker room to the bull pen where the activity is in full swing. Fin and Munch make sure he is thoroughly ribbed for the disease he'd recently been rid of, as well as the evidence of the pale pink spots fading on his skin. Fin makes a comment about Elliot reverting in puberty, asking if this means certain parts of his anatomy will crawl back into his abdomen. Elliot makes sure to throw a wadded up napkin in his direction, but misses entirely. Despite the teasing, he takes the abuse good-naturedly.

Olivia watches silently, seeming pained in her observations, but she returns to her stiff, business-like demeanor with the approach of their captain.

"Elliot," Cragen says in a surprised voice although he is no doubt well aware of his detective's return to the land of the employed masses with the appearance of his doctor's note, confirming his health. "Good to see you back to work. I hope you finally used your time wisely on your lengthy sick leave. God knows we needed your help."

Elliot grins tightly at his superior, hand resting on top of the hulking mountain of well-worn cold case folders. "Need me out in the field, Cap? I could use the fresh air."

Cragen gives him the weary 'don't start your crap' look. "Nice try, Elliot. You should give your body some time to get used to working again." He turns away from him to face the others who sit like a row of captivated spectators. "The rest of you—Liv, John, I want you two to canvass the vic's neighborhood. Talk to her teachers, closest friends. Ask them if anyone jumps out at them as particularly fixated on our victim. Fin, you and I will visit with the girl at the hospital."

Elliot grumbles, watching enviously. "What? No one going to assist me with this paperwork?"

"Why do you need help, Elliot?" Munch asks, monotone. "All you have is time ahead of you."

"That's the problem." Elliot mopes childishly.

"Didn't your mom ever tell you that you make that face long enough it'll stay that way?" Fin chuckles as the group moves to leave.

"Is that's what's wrong with me?" he smirks, feeling vaguely triumphant when the guys laugh boisterously in response. Watching the men wander off, he swivels in boredom back to the miscellaneous documents.

Olivia breezes by him with a knowing grin, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder while she passes. The exchange is short-lived but it gives him hope for the future.

He lets his gaze sweep her form unabashed, then grabs the first folder on the top and flips through it, noting the date of the report filed. 1993. Chances are a hundred badges and pairs of eyes have looked at the same information, making him just another set to do likewise. The probability of him solving a sexual assault a couple decades old is slim, and the chances of him solving another cold case gathering dust at the bottom of the drawer is like getting hit by lightning or winning the lottery. Doesn't usually happen unless under freak circumstances. Best to start with the newer files and he'll work his way through the dead ends until he gets to the oldest case.

He kicks his feet up onto the desk sloppily and begins reading. 2005. 15-year-old female. Unknown assailant. Victim unable to identify characteristics due to perp covering her face with a shirt prior to the rape. Snatched on her way home from school. Sustained mild trauma to genitals, wrists from ligature, face when the perp pushed her to the ground and forced her to eat pavement. DNA and hair follicles collected but not recognized as being owned by any known offenders. Nobody saw anything, nobody has any grudges. Typical quotes. Vic is a good student, church girl, doting parents, no boyfriend. Anyone who'd come into contact with her has an airtight alibi for the attack.

Elliot sighs, scratching his chin, holding himself back out of habit. No wonder it had gone cold. He can feel this going all but nowhere, however it is either this or watching daytime TV at home. The choice is obvious.

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Seeing him is painful, Olivia admits as her mind mulls over her encounter with him earlier. She is in the passenger seat of the sedan, Munch in the driver's seat. Working with him has taken some getting used to; something as simple and inconsequential as who takes the wheel, him or her, used to be a no-brainer. Elliot always insisted on driving because he preferred it—she admits that she'd always hated driving in town so it had never been a problem with her—however, Munch is hesitant when it comes to decision-making. He likes to leave things up to her, she's sure out of respect for her as a colleague, but he seems to handle her gender with baby-gloves.

Work had dragged on relentlessly, and to her misfortune, a lot of his sick time had been spent fulfilling her court duties, sitting through round after round of depositions, hearings, arraignments, etc. Never ending perps, victims, broken families. Elliot did help break up that degradation, being that one shining beacon in the dark and ugly world that she inhabits. At least during his snarly days she had something to keep herself entertained. She had been ticking off days that he'd been gone, and once he'd laid down an actual date to come back, mentally tracking the time until his return.

She realizes how much of a walking contradiction she is, thinking back to his persistent attempts to see her after her release from the hospital and her intentionally ignoring him. She had simultaneously wanted to see him, wanted that contact. Loved the way he smelled, tasted. She had lain awake many nights thinking about the kiss, pondering the what ifs. She had been too scared of losing their friendship to act on it, but goddammit she had hated herself for bailing on him.

How could she talk to him normally once he'd returned? She'll just have to deal with the anguish.

Elliot had looked a little thinner than a month ago, lean, but healthy. He'd gotten plenty of rest during his time off and appeared refreshed. That much was obvious. His eyes had followed her while the group waited in the precinct for orders, and though it had made her almost high with giddiness, it also made her feel that same frivolity. That sensation which makes her impossible in long-term relationships, makes her a lousy girlfriend, unreliable. It's amazing she'd stuck it out as much as she had with Elliot, considering how difficult it is for her to stay committed to any sort of relationship, hell devoted to even her own friends.

She's deduced that being his partner is rather like being addicted to a drug. He's sexy, enticing, and mysterious at times, brooding and intense, but something about his mannerisms is appealing to her and despite his misgivings, she cannot seem to get enough of him. If she's away, she misses him, thinks about him constantly. When she's around him, her world makes sense. It's sick, really. It fulfills every stereotype about her being a woman, that all she needs a man to make her life complete, that the job will never satisfy her needs like he will.

"Hey, Liv," Munch says after carefully parallel parking in front of a looming apartment building in Alphabet City. She'd been ruminating so intently that she hadn't realized how much time and distance had passed. Right. Vic. Canvassing. Interviews.

"Yeah, sorry," she answers, giving her head a shake.

Munch is distracted and staring ahead over the hood of the car, silently studying something with a concentrated frown.

"What?" Olivia tries to follow his gaze, but all she can see is traffic. Her police senses start firing inside her brain and her focus sharpens, adjusting to hear, see, sense anything out of place. "What do you see?"

"Isn't that Elliot?"

She leans over toward the steering wheel, completely disregarding Munch's personal space. "Elliot? Where?"

Sure enough, that same shadowy figure is about fifty feet in front of them, oblivious to their presence. He is standing in front of the East Village apartments off of 8th, the exact building that her and Munch have landed at in their pavement pounding effort.

"That's weird," Munch comments. "I wonder why he's over here? Think he's been listening in on our radio conversation with the captain?"

She moves her head in disbelief, watching pensively until Elliot weaves around the black iron gate and disappears into the front doors. "Maybe."

"I knew he wouldn't be able to resist. We should have been taking bets."

Olivia pushes the passenger side door open without a word, leaving Munch trailing behind, forcing him to catch up to her pace. Her face aches when she recalls the similarity of this scenario and the last encounter with a creepy sex offender, her dashing off with Cragen trying desperately to keep up with her through traffic. She slows until Munch sidles up next to her. They stand before the building until being effectively buzzed in by the super.

"Is this the right building?" he asks to no one in particular, glancing around. "What was the apartment number again?" Olivia wordlessly heads to the stairwell, climbing the steps like a woman possessed. She has to see why he is here. Why he is compromising himself, the investigation, their position on his first day back to work? Are you seriously doing this, Elliot?

"Uh, Liv? Apartment number?"

"This is the right building, John. Apartment 3E."

She reaches the landing of the third floor when she hears the sounds of scuffling, then a shout. Her hands only have enough time to unclip her gun when the door slams open and she is being shoved out of the way. She staggers, feels her feet lose their traction and she falls into Munch, who is directly behind her. They tumble cartoonishly before finally steadying themselves, using a combination of the wall and the handrail to keep from somersaulting down the stairs. Olivia glances both ways, torn between checking on Elliot and giving chase after the suspect.

Olivia climbs to the threshold just in time to crash into her former partner who is bolting through the doorway himself. They knock heads just as Munch pushes himself to stand upright.

"Ow!" Elliot barks, pressing the left side of his face. "Jesus! What the fuck?"

The bridge of her nose is throbbing. "I'm sorry, Elliot. God! It was an accident!"

"No time for mending each other's wounds. Let's go!" Munch yells, turning and running back down without another word or indication that the two of them have heard.

Elliot and Olivia follow him until they have scrambled their way back to the street, but the suspect is long gone. Glancing both ways down 8th, they realize that he has plenty of space to hide and resist any kind of arrest. The aggravation of losing sight of the suspect makes her blood boil and direct it in Elliot's vicinity.

"Just what the fuck were you doing here, Elliot? You're supposed to be working cold cases!" Her hands caress her nose, where a small dribble of copper-smelling blood has trickled out.

He is furious. "I was working a cold case. I was following a potential lead and I ended up here!" He has a blue lump forming just under his eye.

Olivia knows that her anger is misguided, but she doesn't want to let go of it immediately. "Why were you alone, Elliot? Don't you know that it's dangerous?"

He narrows his eyes in disbelief. "You're telling me not to do door-to-door by myself? Didn't you just do that a month ago and nearly get killed in the process?"

She rolls her eyes, swiping at the thin stream of blood. Munch strolls up to them, breaking in between the two. "Hey, I hate to break up this little kumbaya session, but we should probably try to locate the possible rapist. Sorry, I know your problems are really important, but…" He raises his eyebrows, peering over his sunglasses sardonically.

Olivia glares at Elliot, who has his mouth thinned to a grim line. "Fine, John. I get it."


	13. Chapter 13

The ill-timed literal physical meeting of faces at the third floor stairwell has created an inhibiting effect on the detective's moment's ago sharply-focused concentration. Once energized and vociferous, now sidetracked and heated, Elliot and Olivia have parted ways, opting to dart in opposite directions, shouting demands into their respective radios. John tags a few strides behind Olivia as she crosses streets, past housing developments and miscellaneous businesses, but the city seems to have simply swallowed up their suspect—one Mark McGuinn, a puerile, wretched excuse for a human being offering his janitorial services at the nearby high school. Apparently doing a lot more than mopping floors, instead something much more perverse and sinister. Olivia is quite acquainted with that overpowering, hopeless sense of searching for a needle in a haystack. She glances around at the blur of faces meandering by and she knows that she will never find the sneaky little bastard without help.

She slows her jog to a walk, panting, and Munch slopes up beside her, hands on his kneecaps. She notifies dispatch of her position and listens intently for anything, but the response she receives is confirmation from the nondescript female voice returning after a crackle of noise. Elliot informs of his location, as well as patrol cars acknowledging and reporting back. Words blend in with the static of the radios, but she is no longer listening.

Her frustration is tangible enough for Munch to reach out and snag her elbow. His thin fingers dig into the flesh of her arm, but his expression is doggedly sympathetic. "We'll find him."

She shrugs with one shoulder. "Let's head back."

Olivia wonders on the return ride to the precinct why Elliot has decided to intercede on an active case—right out the gate ignoring the captain's orders to take it easy by mulling over the bottom drawer cold files and instead aiming to fulfill his own obsessive need to be part of her investigation. She's not sure if it has anything to do with what had occurred between them; maybe he feels it's necessary to follow her around like a shadow, maybe he simply can't contain the drive to apprehend a sexual predator, or maybe he just loves to take the glory. Who knows.

It really pisses her off.

She's sure that the vein in Cragen's forehead will explode under the pressure of his rage at Elliot's disobedience. He'll do his ranting and raving, threaten suspension, stare down his detective with a hawkish glare and his fists on his hips, the wide desk acting as a barrier between them. Same song and dance. At least things will not have changed all that much.

Surprisingly, she walks into a calm atmosphere—calm at least for what she had expected. When Olivia rounds the desks to peer into Cragen's office, she notices that the space is empty. She studies the captain's cushioned chair for a moment until Munch strolls past, pausing to examine her actions before commenting.

"I suppose Cragen is losing his touch. Looks like Elliot gets a pat on the head instead of the usual threats of termination."

He points to their right, where the large, newly digitized boards have McGuinn's disturbing mug on full display twofold, a side-by-side comparison of his current driver's license photo next to one that is likely ten years younger. Same vacant smirk, slightly pursed lips, hazel eyes with a hollow emotionlessness that gives her the creeps. Elliot and Cragen are standing a few feet apart, stances in synch, matching crossed arms, bold postures.

"What's up?" she calls out.

Don swivels, eyes sweeping her form. He touches the underside of his nose, expressing to her quietly that she has something above her lip. She swipes at the surface there, fingers skimming over sticky, dried blood. It's stopped aching, but she'd forgotten in her tussle to find McGuinn, that cracks to the nose often lead to bleeding. Her face heats up in embarrassment.

Elliot steps out and grabs a tissue from the box on a nearby table, and she takes it begrudgingly. "Thanks," she mumbles.

"Well, Elliot's case is no longer cold. We have a suspect, so I'll spare you the typical 'what the hell were you thinking' routine until later."

The wheels inside her head are kick started into use, and she finally realizes why her old partner had decided to encroach on her investigation. He'd been following a viable lead, clearly, and had ended up at the same location. He'd been following orders after all, even though he probably should have let her and Munch know of his progress so that she could follow up on his lead. "Oh?" she asks, choosing to seem clueless, so that she does not look like an ass wiping the congealed mess off of her face. She tosses the crumpled tissue into a trash bin, sharing a look with Elliot, who only has a small, puffy bruise on his cheekbone to show for their unfortunate encounter.

"I was able to poke holes in McGuinn's alibi by a couple of phone calls, and after a few years of silence, his mom has chosen to speak out about her son's…'predispositions.'" Elliot's expression is pleased and attentive. She'd be similarly cheerful if it didn't annoy her so much. "Turns out there was an incident in his teenage years involving one of his female cousins. Mrs. McGuinn was so ashamed that she kept it under wraps until the girl finally worked up the courage to accuse him of rape. Unfortunately, too much time had passed for anything to be done about it and the case was dropped." He grins. "Until now."

Olivia nods dourly, her face articulating a stoniness that causes the corners of his mouth to fall slightly. "So the MO matches in our case?"

He lets a few seconds pass, almost as if he is thrown off by her icy attitude. "In all three cases. Same method of attack, same weapons used, same restraints. The vics even look identical."

Fin shakes his head from the reclined position at his desk. "I'll never understand why serial offenders often stick with one MO. You'd think they would learn from other's mistakes."

"You start wondering why, you'll likely lose your mind trying to figure it out," the captain responds.

"They stick with what's familiar to them, because to do otherwise would put them at risk for making mistakes," Munch says from the other side of the room. "However, modus operandi does not reflect all serial killers and rapists."

Cragen pushes away from the screen. "Do we have his mother's address on file? Elliot?"

Elliot fumbles for the flip book in his back pocket. "Yep. Over in Sea Cliff off of Dubois Avenue."

"Hm. I'll make a call over to the Nassau County Police Department. Liv, John, gear up. We're going to go arrange a little visit." He senses rather than hears Elliot's protest. "And you're staying here. I need you to consult with VICAP and look for any unsolved cases that match with our guy's MO."

A desk phone breaks the conversation and Olivia leans over to answer it. "Benson."

"Detective Benson, this is Officer Eldridge over at the 9th precinct."

Olivia spins away from the men's probing eyes. "What can I do for you, Officer Eldridge?"

"I'm just giving you a call to inform you of Mark McGuinn's arrest. My partner and I spotted him walking down 12th and positively identified him as your suspect. He's been detained at our HQ but if you want, we can bring him over to you guys."

She is relieved that the perv is off the streets, but brazenly vexed that she was not the person to apprehend him. "Thanks, that won't be necessary. We'll be down soon to get him." Olivia turns back around after hanging up with the youthful-sounding cop. Still optimistic, so the heavy weight of injustice hasn't overwhelmed him with crippling cynicism yet like so many others. "Well, no need to make a trip to Sea Cliff. Unis just collared him in Alphabet City. He's over at the 9th precinct."

Cragen seems almost deflated now that the hunt has been called off. "All right. Why don't you and John go pick him up. Elliot, uh, you can stick around and chat with VICAP if you want, but it can wait until tomorrow if you'd like to go home."

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Elliot predictably chooses to stay, and Olivia revels in his transparency when he follows her to the locker rooms.

"Hey, Liv," he calls after her retreating form.

Olivia refuses to answer, desiring to get out of there as quickly as possible, put herself to work, especially after such a humiliating day. There are a few personnel in the dark space filled with department grey cubbies, but upon her and Elliot's arrival, they watch for a moment, and then disperse. Apparently their arguments are infamous enough that others would rather just stay out of the way than bear witness or intervene.

She feels the warmth of his hand on her shoulder and she finally meets his gaze with harsh irritation. "What, Elliot? What do you want?"

His eyebrows pucker, noticeably struck with confusion as to why she is angry and wants to avoid him. "What's going on with you?"

"Oh, I don't know Elliot. Could it be that you're the reason why McGuinn got away and some cop from another district gets to collar the idiot?"

"It's my fault that he resisted arrest? Because of this?" He points at her face. "In case you've forgotten, we ran into each other. You're just as liable as I am."

"Well, if you weren't snooping around in his apartment building Munch and I could have made the arrest."

He chuckles lightly, and she interprets it as patronizing. "Am I not supposed to follow up on potential leads to a cold case involving an innocent fifteen-year-old girl?"

"You should have let one of us know so we could take care of it. You're supposed to be recovering, or at least that's what Cragen wanted. But naturally you completely disregard his orders."

"That's ridiculous, Liv. Come on," he frowns at her in disbelief.

The sound of her nickname grates on her nerves. "Don't call me that. Stop acting like everything is okay. Nothing is okay." She stalks away, but he follows, if a bit cautiously.

"Is this about what happened at the hospital?"

She throws him a look. "I don't know, Elliot. You're a detective, figure it out."

"Cragen was planning on splitting us up before anything even happened."

"Right." Olivia yanks her locker door open and studies the inside of it, wondering why she had retreated to this room when she did not need anything in particular. She grabs a black sweater off of a hanger and puts it on, and feels his presence behind her.

"Jesus, Liv. You don't really think I conspired with Cragen to break up our partnership, do you?"

"If the shoe fits," she mutters as she zips herself into the sweater.

Olivia watches as his expression darkens and he no longer looks condescending, but dangerous. "You said you were afraid that what we did would ruin everything, but going about it this way is what will destroy our friendship."

Internally she already knows that this is true. He'd created a firestorm by kissing her, but she is certainly spraying gasoline into said firestorm by keeping him at a distance and clinging to any modicum of professional existence as she can. One thing cannot be denied, most notably after their split— goddammit, she misses him. She even misses the ongoing operatic drama between them, despite its ramifications. Tears prick at the edges of her eyes.

Nope. Not happening. She pushes the tears away fiercely, swallowing through a throat thickened by emotions. "Why'd you do it?"

That question again.

He glances at her mouth and the electrical charge of the moment is almost unbearable. "I don't know what you want me to say. I'm still not apologizing for something that felt right." The intensity in his eyes quickens her pulse to triple speed, made worse when he tilts in her direction, a funny, amatory grin in place. She wonders if he intends to pick up where he'd so cruelly left off four weeks ago.

Elliot's scrutiny becomes too penetrating, so she drops her gaze to his chin and studies a fading pink spot near his jaw line. He leans in a little closer, crowding her against the sharp, cold locker, the backs of her knees pressing into the wooden bench behind her.

Butterflies begin to dance erratically, and she cannot press down the hysterical flighty sensation washing over her. She moves herself out of his presence and walks briskly toward the door.

"I can't do this, Elliot." Her entire form moves like she's been struck by a livewire of nervous energy, and she can feel the heavy intensity of the atmosphere—almost as if she is wading knee-high in a thick swamp. "I'm going back to work."

She turns just enough to see that he is staring at her locker, all stubborn resentment and stiffened shoulders. She can tell he's chewing on his lip by the way the muscles in his cheek move. She shoves herself out of the room to escape the oppression of the dark, chilly locker room, but she feels the immensity of irresolution and despondency weighing her down anyway. They simply cannot continue this ridiculous seesaw between them and function properly as detectives. It's impossible. She may have to do what she desperately does not want—transfer to another department. Again.

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Elliot is relaxing on his sofa, feet up on his coffee table, nursing a beer that has begun to warm to the temperature of the air of his apartment. It's well past midnight, but he cannot get himself to mellow out enough for sleep. He knows why—work does not seem as if it is functioning properly, like a gear's sprung loose of the mechanism keeping them operating smoothly and they are now limping along pitifully. Sure, they have their moments as a surprisingly efficient unit despite the occasional mishap, but his return hadn't felt…right.

They'd managed to kill two birds with one stone, and he'd been able to provide satisfying closure to a mother who'd no doubt lost faith in the system long ago by informing her that the creep responsible for her daughter's sexual victimization was finally where he belonged. The relief in her voice had felt like a good enough victory in itself, which is why he'd decided to forego the expected drinks with his coworkers.

He knows in the back of his mind that it would take some getting used to seeing Olivia setting up shop as partner of someone else. And of course the tepid move back to working cold cases didn't feel right either. He remembers when he'd been shot in the arm and while he waited to get back to doing something productive, he'd poured himself tirelessly into the stack of practically ancient, moth-eaten folders, starting with the hardest and oldest case to keep it challenging. Had to keep his mind sharp somehow.

Olivia's brashness toward him is disconcerting, has him feeling rather alone, especially now. Before the pox, they'd no problem meeting after work for drinks with the others, even by themselves. This had been incredibly important for his emotional wellbeing after Kathy had insisted on separating and inevitably filing the divorce papers. He'd never admit he needed that support, but it had been instrumental in keeping a cap on all of that rage.

Now they can't even be in the same room without making the air uncomfortably tense. This is what he'd hoped to avoid. He had a false hope that coming back after weeks of sick leave would give her enough time to process things, but clearly nothing has been dealt with in his absence. The light, casual conversations and quips between one another are simply a memory at this point.

They've been angry at each other many times, but this is obviously much more substantial than before. She's gotten to the point of utilizing the cold shoulder tactic with him in the past—five days was the longest before this stint—but they'd always bounced back. Usually it involved him admitting that he was an asshole and buying her a coffee and breakfast at her favorite diner. He's been forced to learn the hard way how to show he is sorry living with so many women.

Elliot knows that he'll have to do more than a cappuccino and cheese omelet this time, what worked before will not work now.

He sighs, swinging the beer bottle in a small circle, allowing the couple ounces near the bottom to slosh lazily. He'll have to ruminate on what to do tomorrow. Sleep is beginning to tug at his eyelids and he'd rather stretch out on his bed than lie in an uncomfortable ball on his couch.

The bottle is left on his coffee table as he gets up and moves down the corridor toward his bedroom, switching off his TV as he goes.

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Olivia sees the blue flashing tones of his TV reflecting off of the walls go black from her view on the sidewalk and she is momentarily frozen in her place across the street, losing her nerve to go up and confront him. He's gone to sleep. She probably should talk to him tomorrow when her head's not so fuzzy from a few glasses of her dark west coast ale. Her mouth will unquestionably get her into trouble since her inhibitions are a bit lower than if she were completely sober.

She chides herself for trying to be respectful of his rest. He has badgered her countless times by knocking on her door or calling at odd hours, sometimes because of a case, sometimes because he can't sleep and wants someone to talk to.

She shakes her head and decides that, despite the potential consequences of being alone with him—whatever that may consist of—she will indeed go up to his place. They need to talk, or at least that is what Fin and Munch had been insisting during their post-triumphant closed case drinks at their usual cop bar.

"I'm glad we were able to close two cases. Mrs. Fischer probably felt like she'd had the weight of the world lifted off of her shoulders after Elliot called her," Olivia said as she stared at the foam lining the top of her glass. She'd chosen the Black Butte Porter, an import from Oregon, as her beer of choice and she'd forgotten how potent it was. She was pretty buzzed after only polishing off two glasses. She wasn't sure if it was smart to order another, but she felt like it was necessary with Elliot's return to work.

"Uh-huh." Munch and Fin were located opposite her at their booth, sitting easily, giving her a look like they knew something that she didn't. She hated that. It pissed her off, reminding her of her days in school surrounded by stuck up trust fund brats whispering to one another and throwing that expression her way. She recalled the paranoia she experienced, worrying that her mother's embarrassing drunken antics had become public somehow, that she would have to explain the behavior. Why she had dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, why she worried too much about things beyond her years. The knowing glances kept her from truly enjoying herself, socializing. She'd been forced to cocoon herself in loneliness. Sure, she had a few loyal friends, but she ended up feeling much more comfortable being alone. It wasn't easy to open up to people, which is why conflict from anyone in her life felt like treachery. Trusting somebody was a monumental accomplishment, but betraying that trust was almost impossible to recover from. She'd learned over the years to put herself out there, let herself be spontaneous, to love and forgive, but it was always a colossal task, as she still preferred to draw inward out of habit.

She frowned at the two across from her after the fleeting observation, as if she'd just noticed that their response had been needlessly glib. "What?"

The two men both shrugged harmlessly. Fin's smile was caring. "Relax, Liv. Try to enjoy yourself and quit living inside your head for once."

She curled her longer than normal hair behind her ears, feeling awkward. "Sorry. I have a tendency to do that."

Munch reached out and touched her forearm. "It's okay, Liv. We're here to celebrate, not ponder our human frailties."

"Our what?"

"You worry too much."

She sighed. "I know."

The trio lapsed into silence and allowed the dins of the bar to take over their conversation. They used that gap to sip away at their individual drinks, until Olivia could not contain the question growing inside of her, grappling to the surface and past her unrestrained mouth.

"What do you think Elliot's problem was today?" she said, eyes cast at the table but obviously miles away.

Munch and Fin glanced at one another uncertainly, shifting. "What do you mean?" Fin asked fidgeting with silverware rolled up in a napkin.

"Don't you think his actions were out of hand?"

"Not really. He followed up on a lead. What's wrong with that?"

Olivia's gaze hardened as her eyes snapped up to Fin's. "He shouldn't have put himself at that kind of risk. He's still recovering from pneumonia."

Munch leaned in her direction. "Liv, you know he had to be cleared by his doctor to even walk through the station house doors."

"Okay, but there's a reason he was put on desk duty."

"Sure," Munch nodded. "But look at it this way—a perp is off the streets and Mrs. Fischer and Jennie Goodman can both sleep easier tonight."

Olivia seemed to acknowledge this, but shook her head. "I still feel like he should have given us the lead so that we could take care of it for him. At least until he was one hundred percent."

"Why are you so concerned about this? Do you think stressing on what your boy did will make your night any better?" Fin frowned without appearing too intimidating or stern. He had a serious knack for doing that.

"He's not my boy, Fin." Olivia sounded inelegantly bitter. "Actually, I don't know what in the hell he is."

The men's shared grin was noticeable to her this time.

"Okay, what is that? What are you smiling at each other about?"

"Nothing," Munch nonchalantly replied, relaxing into the booth.

Olivia took a sip of her beer, scoffing at their absurd silent inside jokes. The fools were like an old married couple. It was a shame that Cragen had pried them apart. They were obviously perfect for each other.

"So what happened with you and Elliot anyway? Why are you and him at odds? It can't be that he decided to pound the pavement today, because you've been avoiding talking about him for weeks now."

She listened to Munch, but her mind was focused on the man she longed for and loathed at the same time. "It's complicated," she uttered softly. That was a safe response.

"When is it not? Seriously, Liv. What's up?" Fin asked.

"Nothing is up."

"That's not what it looks like."

Olivia burst out in irritation, setting her glass down untidily so that it spilled over the edges onto her hand and shirt sleeve. "What is it with you two? We can't have disagreements without somebody assuming something is wrong? Nothing is going on between him and me. Got it?"

"Whoa," Fin said shock evident on his face. He raised his hands in mock surrender. "Sorry. I just figured you might want to talk about it."

"What would give you the idea that I want to talk to you knuckleheads about my personal life?"

"Oh," Munch responded smoothly. "I didn't realize Elliot had taken up residence in your personal life."

"For fuck's sake," Olivia rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. She waited about ten beats before speaking. "You guys want to know the truth?"

They nodded stealthily moving closer.

"The truth is…" Olivia paused, felt the words settle in the back of her mouth, desiring to be revealed, but fear kept it hidden. She still worried that admitting their kiss would result in punishment. Turmoil and loss.

"There's no judgment here, Liv," Munch said quietly. "We're not going to look at you any differently for something that may be purely innocent, okay? Sometimes you just need to get things off your chest in order to move on."

She could feel her abdomen clench in anxiety, but the beer loosened her tongue. "We kissed." She toyed with her glass, running a fingertip over the condensation accumulating around the base of it, afraid to look up at the men after her revelation. She could see their slackened jaws in her peripheral vision.

"Wow." Fin shuffled around and she finally met their piercing gaze. "Well that explains a lot."

Munch looked unperturbed. She directed her answer to him. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"What do you think about that?"

He crossed his arms over his thin chest. "I think that kissing someone doesn't have to be that big of a deal." He put a hand out when her expression conveyed how she thought his response was ludicrous. "Hang on, let me elaborate. Sure, you two could have gotten into trouble for insubordination, but you're not even partners anymore, so it wouldn't be considered fraternizing, and you didn't kill anyone, you didn't trample all over his marriage since he's going through the big 'D'. The world didn't explode. So what are you afraid of?"

Olivia raked her fingers through her hair, idly wondering why she hadn't cut it short yet. She hadn't had it this long for at least fifteen years. "What am I going to do when it wrecks our friendship? This kind of shit will ruin what we had. And then what? Will it have been worth it?"

"I think you're wrong about that."

"How am I wrong?"

"Admitting your love for one another can strengthen your bond. But you're right about one thing—it will definitely destroy your friendship, but only if you continue to deny your feelings."

Olivia stared at the older man earnestly, hoping that his words were true. "You think so?" Maybe it was the buzz, but she wanted desperately for it to be that simple.

Fin nodded. "You know, instead of listening to Dr. Phil here, you should probably go check on El, see how he's doing."

She pondered that for a few seconds, and then threw back the rest of her ale, stood, shouldered her purse, but not before tossing a few bills onto the table. "I'm going before I change my mind."

"Good for you, Liv."

She's standing in front of his door without cognitively remembering how she had arrived. Her feet had carried her across the road and past the entrance to the stairs, giving her time to consider the exchange she'd had with Munch and Fin. Their rationale had made perfect sense, but now she feels the jumpiness attempt to squash down any courage that had surged after the talk.

Olivia knocks on the door hesitantly, waiting for the telltale sign that he has heard her.

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He's lying on his side, facing the direction he had while sick, when Olivia's curved form resided next to him and the world finally felt perfect, regardless of the illness. He lets his thoughts trail off to waking up with her body flush against his and remembers the way her hair smelled, the small movement of her abdomen as she breathed. It had almost tricked him into thinking that this could be the real deal, that clearly the next step was crossing the last barrier between friends and lovers and becoming an actual couple.

However, what comes naturally to him does not come naturally to her. Being in a relationship is second nature for him, but he understands that Olivia's kind of a lone wolf and the minute a man gets serious about her, she panics, because commitment to one person is probably too finite—he knows that she wants to make sure it's the right decision before going down that path. He gets the psychology behind her reasoning.

He hears a gentle rapping in the front room and he rolls to his back, curiously meditating who could be at his door. He knows by instinct that it's not generally Olivia's style to make a quiet entrance unless it has to do with victims. Kathy will rarely ever drop by at this hour unless something terrible has happened, and even then he is sure she'd call. None of the kids have ever come over randomly at midnight. Couldn't be them.

Elliot's interest peaks and he shoves off of his mattress with fervor, intent in knowing who his visitor is.

He side-steps his coffee table—lesson learned from a month ago—and tiptoes to his door, peering into the peephole. He sees the female shape of his partner…former partner on the other side. He's not certain if it truly surprises him that she is there. He watches as she goes to leave, but he wrestles with the locks and swings the door open before she can take another step.

"Hey," he says as she turns back, slightly startled by the abruptness in which he had answered. She almost blends into the shadows of the corridor as she studies him quietly, hands now shoved into the pockets of her black wool jacket, and he leans into the doorjamb, a confused frown emerging. "What's up?"

Her eyes are probing, wide, appearing almost impenetrably black. She looks like a baby deer, caught in headlights, senses alert, but slightly dulled. Elliot notices the discrepancies of Olivia bright and clearheaded, to Olivia buzzed from drink, although she tries to disguise it. He's seen her at varying degrees of inebriation, and this rates at a margin over tipsy. Which means her mouth and her actions will run looser than normal.

She steps forward and his suspicions are confirmed when he can smell the heavy ale scent on her breath which is coming in wispy threads. She stands inches from him, nearly at eye-level her normally skittish gaze holding to his and he wonders, just how much has she had to drink if she can maintain herself at this level of nearness? He watches her with folded arms as she leans in and pauses. He wants to think it's for effect, but he knows by instinct that it is out of uncertainty. She is constantly questioning her actions, afraid of the consequences. Always judging and anticipating some sort of disaster.

He wants to make use of her closeness, but he feels strongly that this must be based on her judgment. She needs to make the ultimate decision if she wants to proceed with it or not. He can't make the first move this time.

She closes the distance and her lips are petal soft as she kisses him in the apartment hallway, gently experimenting, and he forces himself to underreact, ignores the desire to press back, and grips his elbows instead. She pulls away, searching his expression for a reason to quit, but he refuses to give her one, choosing to remain stoic.

She waits long enough to make him jumpy, and he can't help it when he lets himself slip. "Liv—"

Olivia's hands grip his wrinkly t-shirt, and her lips find his again this time taking what she wants and demanding a reaction. He responds fervently, cupping her face, relishing the warmth and wetness of her open mouth against his. He's wanted this. He's wanted this for longer than he wishes to admit.

"Don't run," he whispers and finds her neck, chin.

She trails her fingers down over his shirt and pushes up the fabric, touching the hot skin of his torso, and his muscles tense and shift underneath her hands. It's so foreign, it makes him feel just as tanked-up as she is, but in the same respect she feels so right against him, it almost feels like an epiphany, a moment of self-realization.

He pulls her into the dark apartment and she kicks his door closed.

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There's nothing sweet or slow about the way they move in the darkness. Any marked gentleness he may desire has fled and in its wake is someone deliberate, intense—exactly as she pictured. His hands aren't even gentle as they explore her body as he bites, licks, kisses his way over her skin, discovering. She gasps when he pushes in and stretches her, waiting as she adjusts to him and then touching in between them with a wet thumb, brushing with the tip of his finger as she moves in desperation. The sensation builds inside of her until the intensity of it pushes her over the edge and causes her to explode from the force of it. She cries out, grips his shoulders, and curls into him.

He begins to thrust at a tantalizing pace just as she finally descends from the peak of her climax and it is not long until he comes, groaning, and collapses against her a long while after. She closes her eyes, breathing him in as he presses his mouth into the crook of her neck.

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She's settling into the warmth of his bed, pleasantly remembering the way it moves, bounces when she gets up, the way it smells like him even hours after he's vacated it. Elliot lies next to her silently, eyes trained to the ceiling and she can't help but feel the ominous change in the air between them.

"I should take off soon," she says, and she regrets the words immediately as a frown pierces his placid expression. When he remains quiet, she proceeds, tugging the flimsy bed sheet up to her shoulders.

"I'd like you to stay." Elliot moves his head to look at her with heavy-lidded eyes.

She rises to her elbows. "I don't know if that's a good idea, El. We tripped right over that last boundary. Sex changes everything between us. Any time I've slept with somebody I have considered a friend, sex has managed to destroy that friendship."

"Haven't we been over this? I'm not everyone," he says, disgruntled. He resents her hesitation, because he sees it as a lack of trust. She knows this by default, because the men of relationship's past have always made her well aware of this. After all of the years they've spent at each other's hip, she still has trouble believing him without question when he tells her that he's different than the rest. Her head screams that it always ends up the same in the end, but her beleaguered heart knows that he has already distinguished himself as the only man in her life despite her responsive shunning and isolation. He's always been there, even at her ugliest.

"You're right," she says, swallowing timidly in the dark. "Sorry."

Olivia knows that normal relationships have moments of tumult, but this is where she is at her worst. Turmoil is something she does not like to deal with because the job requires so much emotional strength and responsibility that she cannot afford to put too much effort into maintaining a relationship. Either she gets frustrated or the men she's been with decide she's not worth it. Elliot has proven time and again that he will not let her go without a fight. And even if she leaves, he will always be there when she returns.

"Don't apologize." He nudges her so that she comes to rest her cheek against his breastbone. "Just sleep."

She allows herself to relax in his embrace, elation and gloom juxtaposing before she feels her muscles relax and she wraps her arm around his waist.

They stare into the night and listen to their breathing, awkwardly at first, but the tendrils of exhaustion pull at their senses, until they succumb to it.

Unsure of the future, they hold tight to each other feeling certain of the moment and they sleep.


End file.
